Presenter Profiles

Diane Ehrlich is the Associate Chair of the Educational Leadership and Development. Department at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago, IL. Professor Ehrlich teaches courses in Human Resource Development and is a member of the North Suburban Higher Education Consortium professional development committee. She has taught courses in consulting and advanced instructional design via interactive TV incorporating web-based support. Dr. Ehrlich has presented and published research both nationally and internationally on instructional design, multi-media, problem-based learning, and management development. She has recently returned from a conference in France on Educational Innovations in Business and Economics where she presented research on distance learning and case-based instruction.

Ross Ferlito retired recently as Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at Colgate University. Although his work has been mainly in literature, he has also enjoyed teaching French and, especially more recently, Italian language courses. Although he considers himself to be rather technology-shy, he was among the first language teachers to use computer-assisted instructional materials, some of which he developed himself. He was also an early user of the Internet for the study of culture in his language classes. His experience with distance learning came from the teaching of a 52 hour introductory Italian course with interactive video.

Dierk Hoffman has his Ph.D. from Basel, Switzerland (German, English, Art History). A professor of German at Colgate University, he researches language pedagogy as well as literature and art. He currently interested in the use of technology in the humanities. In addition to teaching at Colgate, he has taught in an evening school in Switzerland and has edited and directed a new textbook seriers in a publishing company in Germany. His publications include monographs on Paul Leppin (a pre-Kafka writer in Prague), the opera Rosenkavalier, as well as on German grammar and his articles include reviews on textology, German literature in Prague, language pedagogy and individual authors and works.

Ethan Katsh is Professor of Legal Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Co-Director of the Center for Information Technology and Dispute Resolution. He is a graduate of the Yale Law School and the author of two books on law and technology, Law in a Digital World (Oxford University Press, 1995) and The Electronic Media and the Transformation of Law (Oxford University Press, 1989), as well as many articles. During the last ten years, he has been involved in many projects involving the application of technology to law and legal processes. His new book, Online Dispute Resolution: Conflict Resolution in Cyberspace (co-authored with Janet Rifkin), has recently been published by Jossey-Bass.

John G Stoffolano is a professor of entomology at UMass-Amherst. Professor Stoffolano has been involved in distance education since 1996 when he taught the first University of Massachusetts course using MCET (Massachusetts Corporation for Educational Telecommunication). The course was sent via satellite to 127 teachers throughout the U.S. Since then he has taught his course for teachers (Ent. 671 "Using Insects in the Classroom) each year to two or three sites simultaneously using the PicTel studio at the Division of Continuing Education. Currently he is putting this course online using the eCollege platform.

Paul Gary Wyckoff is Associate Professor of Government at Hamilton College. He directs the public policy major at Hamilton, in which students use the tools of economics, philosophy, and political science to design and evaluate public policies. Professor Wyckoff teaches and conducts research on a wide range of policy issues, including economic development, education, health care, and welfare policy. Prior to coming to Hamilton, Professor Wyckoff worked as an economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and taught at Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs.

Patricia Widmayer has been the Director of the North Suburban Higher Education Consortium for more than a decade. In that role, she oversaw the design, construction, and continuing support for a thirty-five site interactive video network and a high-speed (OC3) data network between the colleges and universities in Chicago and the northern suburbs. The consortium includes, among others, Northwestern University, DePaul University, Northeastern Illinois University, Illinois Institute of Technology, three community colleges, the Chicago Historical Society, the Adler Planetarium, and five high schools. She has also been engaged in program development for the interactive video network. For four years, in tandem with her tenure as consortium director, she was Special Assistant to the Vice President for Information Technology at Northwestern, leading in the creation of a joint community initiative called e-TropolisEvanston. She co-authored "The Digital Network Infrastructure and Metropolitan Chicago," a blueprint for creating a high-speed regional network. The report was written for the Metropolitan Planning Council of Chicago and led to this year’s launch of the City of Chicago’s CivicNet project. Patricia twice co-chaired the (Illinois) Governor’s Education Technology Summit, and served on the Governor’s ten-member panel that reorganized higher education in Illinois. Prior to her work with Northwestern, she headed her own Chicago-based consulting firm to which she is, in fact, returning in September to undertake a number of consulting assignments in networking, policy, programming and project management. Until 1985, Patricia was in government in Michigan. She was policy chief for the governor, senior staff for the State Superintendent and the Speaker of the House, and headed the U.S. Congressman’s office. She holds a B.A. and a Ph.D. from Michigan State University.