Keynote and Featured Speakers

Garry Trudeau was born in New York City in 1948, and was raised in Saranac Lake, New York. He attended Yale University, where he received his B.A. and an M.F.A. in graphic design. Doonesbury was launched in 1970, and now appears in nearly 1400 daily and Sunday newspaper clients in the U.S. and abroad. His work has been collected in 60 hardcover, trade paperback and mass-market editions, which have cumulatively sold over 7 million copies worldwide. In 1975, Trudeau became the first comic strip artist ever to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning. He was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1989, 2004 and 2005. Working with John and Faith Hubley, Trudeau wrote and co-directed the animated film, A Doonesbury Special, for NBC-TV in 1977. The film was nominated for an Academy Award and received the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

Trudeau has contributed articles to publications such as Harper's, Rolling Stone, The New Republic, The New Yorker, New York, and The Washington Post. For five years he was an occasional columnist for The New York Times op-ed page, and was later a contributing essayist for Time magazine. He has received honorary degrees from Yale, Colgate, Williams, Duke and 25 other universities and colleges, and has been inducted as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In recognition of his work on wounded warriors, Trudeau has been presented with the Commander's Award for Public Service by the Department of Army, the Commander's Award from Disabled American Veterans, the President's Award for Excellence in the Arts from Vietnam Veterans of America, the Distinguished Public Service Award from the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, and a special citation from the Vet Centers.

Trudeau lives in New York City with his wife, Jane Pauley. They have three grown children.

Mark Salzman is an award-winning novelist and nonfiction author who has written on a variety of subjects, from a graceful novel about a Carmelite nun’s ecstatic visions and crisis of faith to a compelling memoir about growing up a misfit in a Connecticut suburb—clearly displaying a range that transcends genre. As a boy, all Salzman ever wanted was to be a Kung Fu master, but it was his proficiency on the cello that facilitated his acceptance to Yale at the age of 16. He soon changed his major to Chinese language and philosophy, which took him to mainland China where he taught English for two years and studied martial arts. He never gave up music, though, and Salzman’s cello playing appears on the soundtrack to several films, including the Academy Award-winning documentary Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O’Brien. He has also played with Yo-Yo Ma and pianist Emanuel Ax at Lincoln Center. Salzman’s unusual combination of talents—as both a well-known author and a concert-proficient cellist—led to a feature profile about him in The New Yorker magazine. He was also recently presented with the Algonquin West Hollywood Literary Award.

A number of Mark Salzman’s books have been chosen for “book in common” reading programs by more than a few schools and universities for their elegance, humor, and portrayal of our shared humanity. His first memoir¸ Iron and Silk, inspired by his years in China, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction and received the Christopher Award. His book True Notebooks is a fascinating look at his experiences as a writing teacher at Los Angeles Central Juvenile Hall, a lockup for violent teenage offenders. Salzman is also the author of the memoir Lost in Place: Growing Up Absurd in Suburbia, and the novels The Laughing Sutra, The Soloist, and Lying Awake. Common to each of his works is a theme of how people struggle to reach an ideal but often fall short, and the quiet change that takes place in facing the discouragement and the possibility of never achieving their goal. Salzman writes with gut-wrenching honesty and unalloyed warmth, combined with a sharp sense of humor. His forthcoming work is the non-fiction title The Man in the Empty Boat.

Ron Berk is Professor Emeritus, Biostatistics and Measurement, and former Assistant Dean for Teaching at The Johns Hopkins University. He retired 5.851 years ago to pursue speaking and writing full-time. He received the University’s Alumni Association Excellence in Teaching Award in 1993 and Caroline Pennington Award for Teaching Excellence in 1997 and was inducted as a Fellow in the Oxford Society of Scholars in 1998. Since that date, he has been in the Federal Witness Protection Program living in Maryland under the name Puffy Snoop M & M. He served 30 years of a life term at Johns Hopkins, 11 years in the School of Education and 19 years in the School of Nursing, where he mentored numerous faculty and hundreds of students, all of whom unfortunately are still in prison or on probation.

Berk has presented more than 400 keynote addresses and research and training sessions on humor and multimedia in teaching, stress management, and evaluation of teaching performance at universities and conferences in 42 states and 15 countries, including Canada, Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Malaysia, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Sweden, Taiwan, UK (Scotland), and United Arab Emirates. He has destroyed scores of trees and shrubbery by publishing 13 books: eight “serious” books on measurement and evaluation, one on faculty evaluation—Thirteen Strategies to Measure College Teaching, and three on humor—Professors Are from Mars®, Students Are from Snickers®, Humor as an Instructional Defibrillator, and his most recent Top Secret Tips for Successful Humor in the Workplace. His latest book is The Five-Minute Time Manager for College Students. The quality of all of these books, his more than 160 journal articles/book chapters, 270 blogs, and professional presentations reflect his life-long commitment to mediocrity and his professional motto: “Go for the Bronze!”

Chuck Meide is Director of the Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program at the St. Augustine Lighthouse & Museum. He attended Florida State University (FSU), receiving both Bachelor's (1993) and Master's (2001) degrees in Anthropology, with a focus on Underwater Archaeology. At FSU, Meide had the opportunity to participate in and supervise a wide variety of maritime archaeological projects, including investigations of submerged prehistoric hunting and occupation sites and the wrecks of 16th- and 17th-century Spanish galleons, a 1622 Spanish patache or dispatch vessel, a Confederate ironclad and Union supply ships, the earliest Western river steamboat excavated by archaeologists, and La Salle's ship La Belle lost in 1686. He has worked on maritime archaeological sites throughout Florida and also in Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, Virginia, Vermont, Bermuda, a number of Caribbean islands, and Ireland. He is currently completing his PhD research through the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. Meide is also an active NAUI scuba instructor, and taught basic and scientific diving courses at the FSU Academic Diving Program from 1992 to 2000.

Sharan B. Merriam is Professor Emeritus of Adult Education and Qualitative Research at The University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia. Merriam's research and writing activities have focused on adult and lifelong learning and qualitative research methods. For five years she was coeditor of Adult Education Quarterly, the major research and theory journal in adult education. She has published 26 books and over 100 journal articles and book chapters. She is a four-time winner of the prestigious Cyril O. Houle World Award for Literature in Adult Education for books published in 1982, 1997, 1999, and 2007. Her most recent books are The Jossey-Bass Reader on Contemporary Issues in Adult Education (2011), Qualitative Research: A Guide to Design and Implementation (2009), Third Update on Adult Learning Theory (2008), Learning in Adulthood (2007), and Non-Western Perspectives on Learning and Knowing (2007). She has been a Fulbright Scholar and a Senior Research Fellow in Malaysia, and a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at universities in South Korea and South Africa.