Ombudsperson Program

Patrick Lee Plaisance, Ph.D.

Patrick Lee Plaisance is the Don W. Davis Professor in Ethics in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications. He also is an Affiliate Faculty member with the Rock Ethics Institute. His research focuses on media ethics theory, moral psychology theory and methods, and the philosophy of technology as applied to media systems and practices.

He is author of a textbook, "Media Ethics: Key Principles for Responsible Practice" (Cognella, 4th Ed., 2025), which is used nationwide, and a book featuring original research, "Virtue in Media: The Moral Psychology of Excellence in News and Public Relations" (Routledge, 2015). He has published more than two dozen journal articles and book chapters, and his work has appeared in research journals, including Communication Research, Communication Theory, the Journal of Communication, and Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly.

Before coming to Penn State, he taught at Colorado State University for 15 years. He also had a career of nearly 15 years as a newspaper journalist in New Jersey, south Florida and Virginia, where he specialized in state-level political reporting. He received his Ph.D. From Syracuse University.

Cara Exten, Ph.D.

Cara is an associate professor in the Nese College of Nursing and the director of the Translational Science Center. She is an infectious disease epidemiologist, with a focus on health disparities affecting sexual and gender minority populations. Her program of research is focused specifically on disparities related to sexual health (e.g. HIV and sexually transmitted infections) and substance use. She has extensive experience in survey data collection, the application of advanced statistical methods, and working with high-risk populations. She is passionate about the examination of diseases in their entirety, including biological, sociological and epidemiological factors.

Kelly Gallagher, Ph.D., CNM

Kelly Gallagher, assistant research professor in the Nese College of Nursing, is a certified nurse-midwife with nearly two decades of clinical experience supporting women through pregnancy, birth and postpartum care. In addition to her clinical work, she served in hospital leadership roles, helping to guide maternity care quality and interdisciplinary collaboration.

Currently she is part of a multidisciplinary research team developing and innovative AI-driven tool designed to analyze placental images and integrate placental assessment into routine clinical care. Her research interests include maternal nutrition, gestational diabetes mellitus, and women’s health – particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Gallagher’s work is grounded in a commitment to improving pregnancy outcomes, advancing health equity and bringing research into practice.

Andy High, Ph.D.

Andy High, a professor in the Department of Communication Arts and Sciences, maintains two complementary and intersecting lines of research on interpersonal communication focused specifically on supportive communication and computer-mediated communication. Within the context of supportive communication, Professor High examines the personal, relational, contextual, and message-based factors that shape the outcomes people experience when coping with personal stressors. He studies various phases of the process of supportive communication, including how people seek, provide, and process supportive messages. In so doing, his research covers several topics, including support gaps, verbal person-centeredness, and supportive message processing. In his research on computer-mediated communication, He utilizes theory from the domains of both interpersonal communication and computer-mediated communication to understand how and why conversing in various channels shapes the outcomes people experience. Professor High’s two lines of research often overlap as he seeks to gain a better understanding of how supportive interactions unfold in different channels. Professor High teaches both undergraduate and graduate-level courses on computer-mediated communication (CAS 283) and supportive communication.

Kevin Kinser, Ph.D.

Kevin Kinser is a professor and head of the Department of Education Policy Studies and a senior scientist at the Center for the Study of Higher Education in the College of Education at Penn State.

A graduate of Columbia University's Teachers College (New York), Kinser studies non-traditional and alternative higher education, particularly the public policies and organizational structures related to private for-profit institutions and international cross-border higher education. Kinser is co-founder of the Cross-Border Education Research Team (C-BERT), which investigates the scope and impact of international branch campuses worldwide.

Kinser is the author or editor of five books and more than 70 articles, chapters, and scholarly reports. He is regularly invited to present his research at conferences in the United States and abroad. Because of his research, Kinser is regularly sought out by national and international media outlets for commentary on for-profit and international higher education.

Anna Peterson, Ph.D.

Anna Peterson, an associate professor and director of graduate studies in the Department of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies, has been teaching at Penn State since 2014. Before coming to Penn State, she taught in departments at Loyola University Chicago, Hope College, and the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Peterson regularly teaches Greek language courses at all levels, as well as courses on Greek civilization, classical mythology, Greek and Roman literature, and gender and sexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome.

Her research explores the so-called “Second Sophistic,” or the Greek literature and culture that was produced under the High Roman Empire (~50-250 CE), but I am also interested more broadly in the reception of ancient literature. Peterson's book, Laughter on the Fringes: The Reception of Old Comedy in the Imperial Greek World (Oxford 2019) examines how Aristophanes and the genre of Old Comedy was criticized, debated, and utilized by later Greek writers.

Dhananjay Singh, Ph.D.

Dhananjay Singh is a teaching professor of informatics and intelligent systems focused on entrepreneurship and innovation in the College of Information Science and Technology at Penn State. Previously, he was a professor in the School of Professional Studies at Saint Louis University. Before moving to the United States, he accumulated more than fifteen years of experience as a researcher, entrepreneur, professor, department chair, and dean at various organizations in South Korea.

Professor Singh received his B.Tech. in Computer Science and Engineering from VBS Purvanchal University; his M.Tech. in IT with a specialization in wireless communication and computing from the Indian Institute of Information Technology in Allahabad (IIIT-A), India; and his Ph.D. in ubiquitous IT from Dongseo University in Busan, South Korea.

Professor Singh is also the director of the ReSENSE Lab, which provides innovative platforms and solutions to support smart community services. His research interests include human-computer interaction, applied AI and data sciences, intelligent vehicles, and AI-powered IoT technologies. He is a senior member of the IEEE, ACM, and IHCI societies.

Pamela Wilcox, Ph.D.

Pamela Wilcox is a professor of sociology and criminology in the College of the Liberal Arts at Penn State. Her research and teaching interests lie in the following areas: community differences in crime and criminal justice; crime opportunity and crime-related decision-making; victimization; reactions to the threat of victimization (i.e., perceived risk, fear, precautionary and avoidance behavior); gender and crime/victimization; school crime and prevention.

With funding from Penn State’s College of the Liberal Arts, Professor Wilcox recently collected survey data on a national sample of 1500 adults with ongoing analyses focused on reactions to the threat of crime victimization in terms of precautionary and avoidance behavior.