Lucy Burgchardt

Associate Professor of Communication Studies

• Phone: 309-794-7276
• Email: lucyburgchardt@augustana.edu
• Office: Old Main 307

Dr. Lucy Burgchardt teaches Communication and Culture (COMM 260), Communication, Politics, and Citizenship (COMM 230), Public Rhetoric (COMM 330), and Listening (COMM 203). She has worked with a student research assistant to develop a project about the National Park Service, and she has mentored several COMM majors as they've navigated their first academic conferences. Dr. Burgchardt really enjoys helping students get ready for graduate school.

Dr. Burgchardt received the 2019 Gerald R. Miller Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award for her dissertation, “Attitudes Toward Antiquities: Rhetorical Enchantments, Preservation Advocacy, and The American Southwest.”

When Dr. Burgchardt isn't teaching or working on research, she enjoys time at home with her husband, Paul, and their corgi, Tombo. She knows that her last name looks hard to pronounce (it's "burr-kart").

Megan Lorenz

Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience

• Phone: 309-794-7468
• Email: meganlorenz@augustana.edu
• Office: Evald 011

• RELATED: ABCD Lab helps students decide if research is in their future

Megan Lorenz's primary research interests are the development of language and spatial skills in young children. Her dissertation focused on how children’s understanding of words like “close” and “far” facilitates encoding of different spatial locations.

Allison M. Haskill

Florence C. and Dr. John E. Wertz Professor in Liberal Arts and Sciences, Co-Chair of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Director of Master of Science in Speech-Language Pathology Graduate Program

• Phone: 309-794-7388
• Email: AllisonHaskill@augustana.edu
• Office: Brodahl

• RELATED: Faculty spotlight: Dr. Allison Haskill

Alli Haskill is a professor in the CSD Department where she teaches courses in child language development, autism spectrum disorder and child language disorders.

She is the CSD Department co-chair and MS-SLP program director.

Her research interests include grammatical morphology of preschoolers with speech-language impairment and narrative skills of children with autism spectrum disorder and primary language impairment.

Specializations: Child language

Desiree Grace she/her

Part-time Instructor of Business Administration

• Phone: 309-794-8072
• Email: desireegrace@augustana.edu
• Office: Sorensen 107

Specializations: Marketing, Advertising, Marketing strategy and execution, Consumer behavior, Business to business marketing

Laura Kestner-Ricketts

Executive Director of Career and Professional Development

• Phone: 309-794-7338
• Email: laurakestnerricketts@augustana.edu
• Office: Olin 119

Specializations: CORE

Chikahide Komura was born and raised in Japan. His research interest is Vygotskian sociocultural theory of mind with a special emphasis on internalization process of language acquisition.

He is interested in employing dramatic elements in contextually situated interactions for enhancing speaking proficiency of Japanese. He has studied theatre arts and has been trained to be a stage actor and a lighting designer.

Chikahide likes to read the classical plays of Japanese theatre and the works of Haruki Murakami. He also enjoys bicycling, jogging, hiking and traveling with his wife, Miyuki.

Specializations: Sociocultural theory in second language acquisition, Dialogic interaction, Theatre arts

Estlin Feigley

Entertainment & Media Industries Program, Communication Studies Department

• Email: estlinfeigley@augustana.edu
• Office: Sorensen Hall

Estlin Feigley has been a film director and screenwriter since 1999, when his first feature film “Toll Bridge to Iowa” was selected for the IFP New York Film Festival. In 2002, he formed production company Fresh Films/Dreaming Tree Films, which began work in Chicago, directing commercial and short film productions for the Art Institute of Chicago and the City of Chicago, winning awards with the Chicago International Film Festival. Through the productions, Fresh Films also trains future filmmakers in production. To date, Estlin’s production resume includes directing over 200 films, TV episodes, commercials and documentaries, and he continues to engage future filmmakers via Fresh Films which moved onto the campus of Augustana College in 2016.

Estlin’s TV and feature film directing credits include “The Stream” starring Rainn Wilson, Mario Lopez, Christopher Gorham and Kelly Rutherford. The film was called “A Family Friendly Stand By Me” by the Washington Post and released theatrically at Regal Cinemas, the film is currently on Roku, Amazon Prime, iTunes and continues to play internationally on Fox Family Asia and AMC EU channels in various countries. Estlin also co-wrote and directed “Alternate Universe: A Rescue Mission”, starring Steve Guttenberg and Harry Lennix, which premiered at the White House STEM Festival and is currently playing on Paramount +, Redbox and other platforms. Both films had over 150 youth working on-set, including Augustana students.

TV credits include an Emmy-nomination for children's TV series “Moochie Kalala Detectives Club” which Estlin created, wrote and directed. Called “Zany, Educational Fun” by the Chicago Tribune, the 6-episode series aired on PBS WTTW and is currently in production with additional episodes. Additional TV show, Dearly Departed, created in 2019, is currently in series development with Imagine Entertainment.

Documentaries directed by Estlin Feigley include two seasons of the “Filmmaker Lab” with Reese Witherspoon, that trained 41 young women in documentary filmmaking; two seasons of ‘behind the lens’ at Tribeca Film Festival, TV documentary “Believe Chicago” featuring nine difference makers and airing on the Audience Network, and I AM not disABLEd a feature length documentary following the journey of youth with disabilities; this documentary will premiere November 2022 in the Quad Cities and had 14 Augustana students work on the project. 

On the music side, Estlin directed and produced two music videos for Grammy-winning artist Usher, as part of his “Got Noise” project. He also directed two music documentaries, one featuring R&B superstar Monica, and the other, “All Access” featuring Weezer, Blink-182, Franz Ferdinand and Public Enemy that ran on IFC network.  

In addition to film directing, Estlin continues to lead training for students, working directly to mentor them on all aspects of production as faculty at Augustana College, where he teaches production and screenwriting (shown as G. Feigley on Arches) and via Fresh Films, which has 27 sites across the country and hundreds of Alumni in the industry including Augustana graduates and Golden Globe winner Ramy Youssef. Estlin considers his most important contribution the mentorship of young filmmakers to be part of the industry.

Kirsten Day

Professor and Chair of Classics

• Phone: 309-794-7240
• Email: KirstenDay@augustana.edu
• Office: Old Main 26A

I received my bachelor's degree in Ancient Mediterranean Civilizations and Art and Art History from Rice University in Houston and both my master's and doctoral degrees in Comparative Literature with an emphasis in Classics from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. 

I have also spent a good deal of time studying in Greece: I completed a post-baccalaureate year in the College Year in Athens program, participated as a graduate student in a summer study tour in Greece, and attended the American School of Classical Studies in Athens as a Regular Member.

I began teaching at the University of Arkansas while in graduate school and for seven years taught courses there ranging from World Literature and English Composition to Intensive Beginning Latin and intermediate Greek and Latin courses on Homer and Catullus. During the summer, I also worked with the U of A's Youth Opportunities Unlimited and Upward Bound programs, where I taught economically or socially disadvantaged secondary school students from throughout the state of Arkansas. 

In 2005-06, I spent a year as a Latin, English, and Religions teacher at the Cannon School, a private high school in Concord, North Carolina, and from 2006-07, I served as a Visiting Instructor in the Classical and Near Eastern Studies Department at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska.

In the fall of 2007, I joined the Classics department at Augustana, where I also contribute to the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program. Here at Augie, I've had the opportunity to teach courses in Greek and Latin as well as classical epic, mythology, women in classical antiquity, ancient comedy, Classics in film, and more. As director of the Greece Program, in 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2022, I led Augustana students on study tours in Greece, where we visited many of the most important sites and monuments of Greek antiquity. The Greece program is scheduled to run again in January 2025, this time in partnership with my colleague in Classics, Dr. Mischa Hooker. And in the fall of 2022, I started teaching at the East Moline Correctional Center as part of the Augustana Prison Education Program.

My main research interests focus on Classical representations in popular culture and on women in the ancient world. My dissertation examines women's self-image in the epics of Homer and Virgil, but most of my research since has focused on classical representations in film (though often, with an eye to gender issues). 

I served as Area Chair of the "Classical Representations in Popular Culture" panels at the Southwest Popular and American Culture Association Regional conferences from 2002-2013. I acted as guest editor of a special issue of the Classics journal Arethusa on the subject of Classics in cinema (January 2008), and co-edited the similarly-focused pilot issue of the online journal Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy (available at: http://journaldialogue.org/issue-1-home/).

I have also published several articles on the subject (see CV). In June of 2016, my first monograph, Cowboy Classics: The Roots of the American Western in Ancient Epic,  which looks at Western film as a modern counterpart to Greek and Roman epic, was published at Edinburgh University Press.

Megan Christensen

Manager of Grants and Corporate Relations

• Phone: 309-794-7189
• Email: meganchristensen@augustana.edu
• Office: Sorensen Hall

Specializations: Advancement