Staff

Betty DeBerg, Project Director, is a Professor of Religion and Head of the Department of Philosophy & Religion at the University of Northern Iowa.  She has been conducting research about religion on campus since 1995, and is co-author of Religion on Campus (North Carolina, 2000).  Her field of expertise is the history of religion and culture in the U.S.; her first book was Ungodly Women: Gender and the First Wave of American Fundamentalism.  She received her Ph.D. in religion from Vanderbilt University, taught from 1988-1997 in the Theology Department at Valparaiso University, and has held her position at the University of Northern Iowa since 1997.  She serves on the National Advisory Panel for the Lilly Endowment Inc. initiative, Programs for the Theological Exploration of Vocation (PTEV), and on the American Academy of Religion's Task Force on Religion in the Schools.

A sociologist by training, John Schmalzbauer is Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Missouri State University where
he holds the Blanche Gorman Strong Chair in Protestant Studies.  A post-doctoral research associate at the Center for the Study of Religion
and American Culture from 1996 to 1998, he was part of the team that produced Religion on Campus.  His own book People of Faith: Religious Conviction in American Journalism and Higher Education explores the role of religion in the careers of 40 prominent journalists and academics. As co-investigator on the National Study of Campus Ministries, Schmalzbauer has been involved in every stage of the project, including research design, ethnographic site visits, telephone interviews, survey development and the interpretation of findings.

Sarah Ehlinger has been the Project Manager for the National Study of Campus Ministries since July of 2005.  Sarah joined the project after having worked as a research analyst in the private sector for five years.  Sarah has extensive experience in both qualitative and quantitative research methods.  She holds a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology, her major area of study being Social Psychology with a minor in Quantitative Analysis from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.  In addition to overall project management responsibilities, Sarah has led the design of the quantitative survey instrument, conducted qualitative interviews with chaplains at church related colleges and universities, managed the project website development, and analyzed survey data.

Doug Magnuson is Associate Professor at the University of Victoria, School of Child & Youth Care, where he teaches research methods and statistics, and he is editor of the journal and book series, Child & Youth Services.  In British Columbia he is working with a group of academics and practitioners on a study of how to reduce the frequency of adversarial relationships between families and workers in the child protection system.  He has a forthcoming edited book, Work with Youth in Conflicted and Divided Societies, from Sense Publishing, Rotterdam.   Doug worked on the National Study of Campus Ministries for one year, 2004-05, while he was still at the University of Northern Iowa, and was instrumental in research design.  He also conducted many of the interviews of church-related college/university chaplains.

Jamila Hulbert-Kepple, Research Assistant, is a senior biology:  ecology and systematics major, with minors in natural history interpretation and anthropology.  She has been with the study for three years, and has been involved in gathering research, editing transcripts of qualitative interviews, designing graphs and charts for displaying survey findings, and other general office work.  Upon graduating in May 2007, she hopes to find a job in a zoo as an animal trainer.

Ryan McGeough, is an M.A. student in the Communication Studies department at UNI studying political communication and rhetorical criticism. His research interests include the uses of irony and satire, social protest movements, new communication technologies, and critical studies in religious practice. As a research associate with this project, his responsibilities have included sorting and dividing interview transcripts, conducting interviews, and qualitative analysis of interview responses. In addition to this work, he teaches two sections of the Oral Communication course at the university. He spends his free time performing and traveling with a group working to prevent sexual violence on campus and other campuses nationally, serving on the student government, and playing for the local semi-professional football team. In the fall, Ryan and his wife will move and begin their Ph.D. work.