Keynote Speaker: Dr. Donald Cress

Dr. Donald Cress was Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside for twelve years.  He retired in June of 2010, but has remained an active member of the University of Wisconsin-Parkside community as well as the Kenosha, Racine and Milwaukee communities.   He continues to assist the University of Wisconsin-Parkside students in the pre-health programs by doing mock interviews with them.

Dr. Cress received his Ph.D. from Marquette University and taught at Carroll College (now Carroll University) in Waukesha before spending 25 years at Northern Illinois University where he chaired the Philosophy Department and later served as Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. He was an American Council on Education Administrative Fellow in 1985-1986.   Dr. Cress has been a long-standing supporter of undergraduate research and creative activity at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside and other institutions. 

Dr. Cress has published widely on medieval and early modern philosophy and has presented his research at national and international venues. He held a Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Fellowship, a Council on Library Resources Grant, two Mellon Post-Doctoral Grants, an Illinois Humanities Council Grant, and several grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He also participated in a Fulbright Seminar for U.S. Administrators in International Education in Germany and a CIEE Faculty Development Seminar in Northern Ireland.   The second edition of his Jean Jacques Rousseau: The Basic Political Writings was published last December.  He is currently working on two articles, one on Raphael, the other on Descartes.