Staff

Living-Learning Center staff

Carl Ipsen

Carl Ipsen

Director

I began my academic life as a historian of science interested in the social sciences and in particular demography. My dissertation work on population policy in Fascist Italy turned me into more of an historian of social policy and social problems. My second book on children’s issues in c.1900 Italy (abandonment, labor, delinquency, emigration) continues more or less in that vein. I have also done some work on emigration and ideas about emigration in that same period. My latest book (May 2016) is on the history of smoking in Italy. My current project is a study of the history of olive oil in southern Italy from the eighteenth century to the present day. 

My teaching has focused on nineteenth- and twentieth- century Europe and Italy (including specific courses on the mafia and fascism), though I have also looked at the very long-term question of Europe’s place in the world and taught several times a course on world history since 1945. In the last few years I have also taught “Edible Education 101," my version of a course sponsored by the Edible Schoolyard Project at UC Berkeley. Starting in Summer 2019 I will be teaching a short course at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy.

In terms of administration, I was the director of the Collins Living Learning Center 2011-18 and of the IU Food Project and Institute since 2015.

Beyond the academy, I have worked as a consultant on the issues of contemporary child immigration and integration in Italy (an EU project) and on smoking in post-World War II Italy (for a law firm). I grew up in Berkeley and have spent a number of years in Italy, mostly Rome, on various research trips and as a fellow of the American Academy in Rome. 

Yara Clüver

Yara Clüver

Associate Director

Associate Director Yara Clüver has a background in the arts (MFA in photography) and years of experience in student affairs, having been at Collins for over 20 years. She enjoys interacting with our residents and helping them integrate their living experience to their curricular, co-curricular, and extra-curricular plans and career paths. She oversees the day-to-day operations at Collins, mentors our Arts Council student group, and prepares the Collins Q instructors to teach Q199 to our incoming students (our gateway to Collins course).

Together with the Collins Director, Yara coordinates the Collins International Diversity and Inclusion Scholar (CIDIS) program, which brings emerging and established artists as well as scholars from across continents to live and teach at Collins. She can help with questions about academics at Collins, student programming, and is a good source of information about the campus and local arts community.

She teaches a variety of courses at Collins, including “Discovering the Artist's Book” (a hands-on studio course), a service-learning course called “Art and Community” (where IU students engage with children in public schools in self-directed art projects), and most recently “Food Photography” (which combines practice with history and theory on the topic).

Clüver exhibits her work and gives talks on art nationally and internationally. She grew up in three continents in a multicultural home and in addition to English, speaks German and Portuguese fluently.

Leigh Suggs

Leigh Suggs

Assistant Director

Pronouns: she/her

Assistant Director Leigh Suggs handles admissions and housing for the LLC, alumni relations, oversees Collins LLC budgets and program development, and works with several student groups in the LLC and Collins Student Government (Board of Programmers, Cheshire Café, Philanthropy and Action Council, E-Force). Leigh spent all four of her years in undergrad living at Collins and worked as the Collins Student Services Assistant for the 14 years that followed that, so she can answer a variety of weird Collins questions and has a long-standing connection to several classes of Collins alumni.

Leigh graduated from IU with a B.A. in History in 2008 and a Master’s degree in Information and Library Science in 2015. In her free time, she plays board games and tabletop rpgs, dances salsa, and dips her toes into various craft projects.

Heather Holmes

Heather Holmes

Student Services Coordinator

Student Services Coordinator (SSC) Heather Holmes staffs the public office from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays. In addition to giving tours and assisting seminar instructors, she can answer questions about the LLC, get your free Ryder Film Series tickets (two per week per resident), help you sign up for field trips and ticket reimbursement programs (Collins often subsidizes tickets to campus and community events for residents), and check out equipment to you (such as still and video cameras). She also helps manage the official Collins Facebook Page and Twitter and can help you plan and implement programming within Collins.

Tanjimul Alam

Tanjimul Alam

Co-Director of SustainCollins and Sustainability Program Assistant at the Office of Sustainability

Tanjimul works as both a part of Sustain IU and the LLC / SustainCollins leadership team at Indiana University. Co-directing SustainCollins alongside his counterpart Elspeth and wonderful student leaders, Tanjimul helps connect students to campus sustainability efforts and programming open to floor members and Collins residents alike.As IU Office of Sustainability staff, his team’s role is to evaluate, report, and collaboratively improve the university’s sustainability performance. This includes looking at the efficiency / longevity of our resource use and determining IU’s operational environmental and human health impacts – both entail the goal to improve and prepare for the future. As the Sustainability Programs Assistant, Tanjimul takes on a jack-of-all trades role as the seasonal projects and administrative arm of the staff. You can find him at his office at the E-House between the main quad and Hillcrest most days. Tanjimul received an O’Neill BSPA in Sustainability in 2018 and he loves watching the skies (clouds, stars, aviation, and more!), learning about the world, and trying new makerspace/design skills in his free time.

Elspeth Hayden

Elspeth Hayden

Co-Director of SustainCollins and Associate Director of the Integrated Program in the Environment

Elspeth co-directs SustainCollins with fantastic colleague Tanjimul and additionally oversees admissions, recruitment, and programming for prospective and current IU students on sustainability and the environment with an interdisciplinary focus through the Integrated Program in the Environment. Send her an email or stop by SPEA 239 to learn more about degree options in environmental & sustainability studies and environmental science, as well as a variety of minors from environmental management and recreation & the outdoors to environmental health, biology, water management, geography, and more!Elspeth’s career and service background is in higher ed student support, the environment, and arts & nonprofit management. She is passionate about public libraries, local farm and food systems, and recreating outdoors – on most evenings and weekends you can find her managing invasive plants in local greenspaces or training for a variety of triathlons and road races on the trail and pavement around town and county.

Jennifer Goodlander

Jennifer Goodlander

Director of the ACT Humanities Program

  • jgoodlan@indiana.edu

Jennifer Goodlander is excited to be the inaugural director for the ACT-Humanities Program. For ACT she fosters the partnership between Collins LLC, the Cook Center for the Public Arts and Humanities, and the Arts and Humanities Council which offers innovative workshops, internships, and travel opportunities that relate to student’s careers and interests. She also will teach the spring ACT Seminar that focuses on how arts and humanities can impact communities and improve the world we live in.Her teaching and research in arts and culture is informed by her own experience as a working artist. In New York City and regionally Prof. Goodlander worked extensively as a director and teacher with a special emphasis on new plays, feminist theatre, and physically based performance, combining Asian theatre into innovative productions of The Ghost Sonata, The Bacchae, and others. She was a member of the 2005 Lincoln Center Director’s Lab that focused on new play development and working in collaboration. She often shares her research through performances and lectures at theatres, civic groups, and universities and has performed wayang kulit (Balinese shadow puppetry) both nationally and internationally.Currently, Dr. Goodlander is an Associate Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature where she teaches classes on Indonesian and global theatre, queer literature, Asian and Asian American performance, and interdisciplinary arts. Jennifer has published numerous articles and two books: Women in the Shadows: Gender, Puppets, and the Power of Tradition in Bali (Ohio University Press, 2016) and Puppets and Cities: Articulating Identities in Southeast Asia (Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2018). Her current research and creative practice look at transnational Southeast Asian identities as expressed in performance, literature, and art. Outside of work, Jennifer lives in Brown County with her wife and dog and loves exploring the local art and nature. She also plays roller derby with Circle City Roller Derby in Indianapolis.

Residence Life staff

Claire Lee

Claire Lee

Residence Life Coordinator - Operations

  • leecq@iu.edu
  • Edmondson C123
Stephanie Dana Ely

Stephanie Dana Ely

Residence Life Coordinator - Student Development

  • sdana@iu.edu