Ph.D., Rutgers University – New Brunswick, 2000
M.A., University of South Alabama, 1994
B.A., University of Alabama, 1992
Rebecca Boone has taught courses on the Renaissance and Reformation, Early Modern Europe, the French Revolution and Napoleon, the Atlantic World, Witchcraft and the Occult, Ancient Greece and Rome, and the History of Food, among others. Her Issues in World Cultures II course was cited as exemplary by the Center for Educational Policy Research. An intellectual and cultural historian, Dr. Boone researches the relationship between information and state power in the early modern world. Her books include War, Domination, and the Monarchy of France (Brill, 2007), Mercurino di Gattinara and the Creation of the Spanish Empire (Routledge, 2015), and Real Lives in the Sixteenth Century: A Global Perspective (Routledge, 2018). She is also the general editor of a five-book series on global history, Real Lives in Global Perspective. In 2018, Dr. Boone was awarded a grant from MIT and the Andrew Mellon Foundation to complete a module for the Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative. Previously Dr. Boone served as the Associate Dean for the College of Arts & Science from 2019 - 2020 and Chair of the History department from 2020 - 2024.
She holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Texas Christian University. Before joining Lamar University in 2008, she worked as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Institute for Tuberculosis Research of University of Illinois at Chicago. She teaches Organic Chemistry at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Her research grants include an American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund award studying metal-organic frameworks and a Welch Foundation research grant studying metal-catalyzed coupling reactions. She has published over twenty peer-reviewed journal articles and had numerous presentations at national and regional conferences. Dr. Lei is a recipient of the 2014 Lamar University Merit Award, the 2016 Lamar Faculty Mentor Award, and the 2020 Lamar Honors Professor of the Year Award. Before joining the Dean’s office, Dr. Lei served as the Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Lamar University.
Dr. Alm holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Iowa State University. Before coming to Lamar University in 2017 to chair the Department of Mathematics, he taught mathematics for nine years at Illinois College, the oldest institution of higher education in the state. He served as Director of the Quality Enhancement Plan from 2018 to 2022, when he moved to the Dean's office. He has published over 30 peer-reviewed articles, and has a knack for finding finite representations of small relation algebras, a useful skill in everyday life. Dr. Alm believes that the sum-product phenomenon in prime fields holds the key to unlocking the Flexible Atom Conjecture, which he hopes to prove one day. He enjoys playing the ukulele, much to the consternation of his daughters.