Office of Faculty Development

The Office of Faculty Development is staffed by senior and junior faculty members who have demonstrated excellence in all three categories of teaching, active scholarship or creative work, and service. They represent different disciplinary divisions and seek to share their wisdom and experience as teachers, scholars, and active community members with all faculty members. 

Janet McCracken, Senior Faculty Associate

Janet McCracken is a professor of philosophy, chair of the self-designed major, current director of the Ethics Center, and former dean of faculty and Krebs provost at Lake Forest College. She was the 2020 winner of the College’s Great Teacher Award, a 2021 winner of the Trustee Award for Teaching Excellence and Campus Leadership, has served on all the major governance committees, and mentored countless senior theses and projects. She is an active scholar, with a 2023 essay, “Why We Love Our Phones: A Case Study in the Aesthetics of Gadgets,” anthologized in Comparative Everyday Aesthetics : East-West Studies in Contemporary Living, and a 2020 article on “Perry Mason as Greek Tragedy: the Eternal Allure of Aristotle” in Perry Mason and Philosophy. 

Enrique Treviño, Senior Faculty Associate

Enrique Treviño is the Ernest H. Volwiler Professor of Mathematics, winner of the 2023 Great Teacher Award, and current chair of the department of Mathematics and Computer Science. Enrique is an active and prolific scholar, who collaborates regularly and internationally with other scholars, sharing his work at important conferences and publishing over 40 articles. In 2017, Enrique translated a book called Cuban Mathematical Olympiads, and he has two new articles about to appear, one on “Dynamical Systems Proof of an Elementary Number Theory Result” for The College Mathematics Journal and the other on “Partitioning Powers into Sets of Equal Sum” for The Rocky Mountain Journal of Mathematics. 

Rob Lemke, Senior Faculty Associate (Fall Semester)

Rob Lemke is a professor of economics, the Morten Professor of Public Policy, a former chair of the largest department on campus, winner of the 2019 Great Teacher Award and the 2017 Trustee Award for Teaching Excellence and Campus Leadership, and frequent member of major governance committees such as ARRC, FPPC, and PTS. He has carried high student advising loads, mentored countless senior theses and Richter scholars as well as a recent Rocco project on economic disparities between First-Nations and non-First Nations Australians. He has authored over 20 peer-reviewed articles and has a recent article in Managerial Economics, co-authored with Professor Nancy Tao and two Lake Forest College students, called “Examining the Complementary Relationship between Peer-to-Peer Lending and Traditional Banks in the United States."

Ben Zeller, Senior Faculty Associate (Spring Semester)

Ben Zeller is the Ervin L & Fern D. Young Professor of Religion and chair of the religion department. He is an extraordinarily active scholar, who has published two books, edited others, and authored numerous articles. He regularly shares his work on the international conference circuit and just published a new article “The Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light: An Islamic Millennial New Religious Movement” in the August 2025 issue of Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions. Ben has recently chaired the Faculty Personnel and Policies Committee for two years, with all the knowledge of college-wide committee work that brings. Notably, Ben was selected as the Lake Forest College ACM Mellon Academic Leadership Fellow for a 2-year term beginning in July 1, 2025. Thanks to the ACM’s $1.6 million Mellon Grant, Ben will be able to envision and champion the creation of a new Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship Center next year. 

Kimiko Matsumura, Junior Faculty Associate (Fall Semester)

Kimiko Matsumura is an assistant professor of art history. She is an outstanding teacher, whose teaching excellence was on display for all who attended her faculty colloquium presentation last year. Although she has been at the College only since 2023, she has already published her scholarly work and is very active in presenting her scholarship at conferences and symposia. Kimiko’s work integrates her background in biology, technology, and art, all of which inform the book she is working on, Modalities of Nature: The Habitat Diorama and Contemporary Art. Kimiko notes that she was inspired to participate as a junior fellow this year because of the positive impact the new tenure-track seminar had on her and because she is “attuned to current issues in higher ed teaching and willing to voice perspectives on the humanities and minority experiences.” 

Nora McLean, Junior Faculty Associate (Spring Semester)

Nora McLean is an assistant professor of psychology. Although she has been at Lake Forest College only since 2023, she is a seasoned, successful teacher and an active scholar, with fourteen peer-reviewed articles to her credit, reflecting her division-spanning interdisciplinary interests in psychology, biology, economics, and neuroscience. Her article “Psychosocial stress, hormones, and impulsivity/risk-taking in economic decision-making” just appeared in the 2024 Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics. Prior to coming to Lake Forest, Nora taught at nearby Carthage College, where she chaired the Research, Scholarship, and Creativity Committee, which helped faculty in developing research in a small liberal arts college environment and provided and recommended funding. She notes that her teaching and research experience along with balancing two parental leaves position her well to mentor new faculty members.