Miriam L. Wallace is Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Illinois-Springfield, and Professor of English. She is a graduate of Swarthmore College (BA) and the University of California, Santa Cruz (MA/PhD) in Literature. As a proud liberal arts graduate, she advocates for the value and impact of academic study, art making and performance, public presentations, and study abroad—noting their impact on self-confidence, intellectual curiosity, and personal and professional growth.

Lan Dong is the Louise Hartman Schewe and Karl Schewe Professor in Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Heather Bailey has a Ph.D. in modern European history from the University of Minnesota and has been teaching modern European and Russian History courses at UIS since 2002. Her research focuses on the intellectual, cultural, and diplomatic relations between France and Russia in the nineteenth century. She has published extensively on negative attitudes about Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church in western European discourses.