School welcomes new faculty, staff

Several new faces greeted students in the classroom and around campus when they returned for the start of the new school year at LSMSA.

Six new faculty and six new staff members joined the LSMSA family for the 2017-18 school year.

The new hires are Cher Anabo, Dr. Justin Barker, Krista Broussard, Leopold Eisenlohr, Kayla James, Marcus Journey, Dr. John Littlejohn, Craig Ludvigson, Dr. Nathalie Malti, Moriah Bolen, Bonnie Rutledge and Alexis Stevenson.

Cher Anabo will serve as the dance instructor. She is a multidisciplinary artist and collaborator who has taught, choreographed and performed throughout the United States and Southeast Asia. A native of Laguna Province in the Phillippines, Anabo earned her Master of Fine Arts in dance with a specialization in performance and choreography from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She has studied and performed with Balinese Gamelan Segara Madu, Monkey Waterfall Dance Theatre Company and Zany Umbrella Circus. She has taught at St. Mary’s College of California, California Institute of the Arts, the School of the Arts-Singapore, Damansara Performing Arts Centre in Malaysia, Univeristy of California at Santa Cruz, San Francisco Ballet and Ballet Lubbock. She is excited to guide the dance program and to share her passion for yoga and cooking vegan and vegetarian cuisine with her new LSMSA family.

Dr. Justin Barker will teach English. She received her Ph.D. in medieval literature from Purdue in 2017, a master’s in English from New York University and a B.A. in English and creative writing from Queens University of Charlotte. Her research focuses on the intersections of medieval vernacular poetry and Aristotellian natural philosophy. Her research and teaching interests include Chaucer, 15th-century literature, medieval science, rhetoric, ecocriticism, British literature and composition, and she will also teach anything related to monsters, zombies and/or dystopian literature. Barker looks forward to teaching writing and British literature in the fall and to mentor and work closely with her students.

Moriah Bolen is a native of St. Louis, Missouri, and graduated from Louisiana State University at Alexandria with a bachelor’s degree in English. Bolen recently worked in the admissions office at LSU-A and will serve as an SLA in Caddo. She is looking forward to working with the LSMSA students.

Krista Broussard will serve as a student life advisor for Caddo Hall. She is a graduate of Northwestern State University and is currently working on her master’s in library science through the University of North Texas. She worked in a public library in circulation and before that in youth services. She said that she is so excited to be at LSMSA and work alongside the gifted faculty and fabulous staff as well as getting to know and work with students from diverse backgrounds with various interests.

Leopold Eisenlohr earned his B.A. in Chinese and Arabic from Ohio State University, his master’s degree in Middle Eastern studies from the University of Chicago and is currently in the doctoral program in East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania. He will teach college level accelerated Chinese I.

Kayla James will serve as an accountant in the business office. She has a Bachelor of Business Administration in accounting from Henderson State University. She is currently studying in the master of accountancy program at Auburn University. For the last two years, James worked as a bookkeeper for the LSMSA Foundation. She is thrilled about this new opportunity and cannot wait to learn as much as she can about governmental accounting.

Marcus Journey received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Brigham Young University Idaho and his Master of Fine Arts from Louisiana Tech University. As an artist, Journey utilizes a mixture of video and photography to investigate cultures living on the margins of society. His work has been exhibited in various shows nationally. He currently lives in Shreveport and is excited to teach visual arts at LSMSA.

Dr. John Littlejohn comes to LSMSA from Randolph-Macon College in Virginia. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Kansas and will teach German and fine arts. He looks forward to working with the bright young students at LSMSA.

Craig Ludvigson comes to LSMSA with maintenance and repair experience from all over the globe. He has worked in the Netherlands, Portugal and England. He worked as a pipe fitter at the Olympic Village in London for the 2012 Olympic Games. He will work as a maintenance repairman.

Nathalie Malti will teach French. Originally from France, she earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English literature from the Universite Charles de Gaulle – Lille 3, in Lille, France. She has taught French in the U.K. and the United States both at the college and high school levels. She moved to Louisiana to complete a Ph.D. in French at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. Prior to joining the LSMSA faculty, she was a French instructor at Natchitoches Central High School for six years.

Bonnie Rutledge will serve as the administrative assistant in the College Counseling Center. She has worked in the Rapides Parish and Natchitoches Parish school systems. She earned a two-year degree in drafting and design. She worked in the engineering field designing subdivisions, but left to join the education system hoping to make a difference with children and their futures. She is very excited and honored to work with the gifted and talented students at LSMSA.

Alexis Stevenson is a native of Vicksburg, Miss., and recently received her Bachelor of Science in business administration from Mississippi Valley State University. She is currently a graduate student at Northwestern State University where she is enrolled in the student affairs in higher education program. Stevenson is certified in IC3 Computer Literacy. She is a member of the National Association for Student Affairs Professionals Student Leadership Institute and also a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.