In recognition of their many years of distinguished teaching, research, and leadership, Dr. Lauretta Bushar, professor of Biology; Dr. Marianne Miserandino, professor of Psychology; and Dr. Naomi Phillips, associate professor of Biology, have been named Professors Emeritae at Arcadia University.

Dr. Lauretta Bushar
Dr. Bushar arrived at Arcadia in 1993 as an assistant professor, rising to full professor during her time at Arcadia. She served as chair, and then co-chair, of the Biology Department for 12 years. Her scholarly interests have focused mostly on snakes, including the ecology and population genetics of threatened and endangered species. Additionally, Dr. Bushar ran a research program on the island of Aruba in the Netherlands Antilles studying the endangered Aruba Island Rattlesnake, Crotalus unicolor, and the invasive Boa constrictor.

In 2018, Dr. Bushar won the Lindback Distinguished Teaching Award, which recognizes a faculty member who is an especially effective classroom teacher and who has significantly influenced student education. In addition, she was recognized by the Ellington Beavers Fund for Intellectual Inquiry in 2004 with an award to help support her work with students. Shortly after she started as Arcadia, Dr. Bushar was selected as the Stacy Anne Vitetta ’82 Professor, a two-year appointment given to new faculty to support their research in natural science. 

Dr. Bushar earned her undergraduate and master’s degrees from Lehigh University, and received her doctorate in Biology from Bryn Mawr College.

Dr. Marianne Miserandino
Dr. Miserandino joined the Arcadia faculty as an assistant professor of psychology in 1992 before becoming a full professor. She has taught Social Psychology, Personality Psychology, What it Means to Be Human: Character Strengths and Weaknesses, and Senior Seminar, where she directed the senior internship program. Her research has focused on motivation and developing innovative pedagogy to foster student learning.

Dr. Miserandino was named Professor of the Year in 2009, which recognizes people who, through their outstanding teaching skills, affect the lives and careers of students and contribute to Arcadia’s overall welfare. She received the Lindback Distinguished Teaching Award in 2000 and the American Psychological Association’s Society for the Teaching of Psychology Teaching Excellence Award in 2010. She is the author of an undergraduate textbook, “Personality Psychology: Foundations and Findings,” which has been used at Arcadia and elsewhere.

She earned her undergraduate degree from University of Rochester and her Ph.D. in Social-Personality Psychology from Cornell University.

Dr. Naomi Phillips
Dr. Phillips is a broadly trained marine biologist who specializes in evolutionary relationships in benthic marine plants. She came to Arcadia in 2005 after a very productive postdoctoral fellow position at the University of Florida in Dr. Charlie Baer’s lab, where she worked on mutation accumulation in nematodes. 

She joined Arcadia as an assistant professor and is now an associate professor. She developed one of the only research labs in the United States working on evolutionary relationships in brown algae. Her research interests have also included conservation genetics in endangered primates in Bioko Island and recently in examining Hemp genetics.

Dr. Phillips was selected as the Stacy Anne Vitetta ’82 Professor in 2007. Also in 2007, Dr. Phillips won the Thomas Dougherty Endowed Faculty-Student Research Award, which is given to a junior faculty member in the sciences to assist with research, and an award from Ellington Beavers Fund for Intellectual Inquiry to support her work with students.

She earned her undergraduate and master’s degrees from Sonoma State University in Marine Biology working with Dr. Kris Kjeldsen and her Ph.D. in Botany from the University of Hawaii in Dr. Celia Smith’s lab.