Jacquelyn Lee, Ph.D., LCSW is an associate professor in the School of Social Work and joined UNCW in 2012. Dr. Lee's program of research includes four distinct but overlapping areas: trauma/secondary traumatic stress; pedagogical and curricular innovation; caregiving; and workforce development and wellbeing. Cross-cutting themes include: mindfulness, self-care and self-compassion.
A recipient of the 2020 Chancellor's Teaching Excellence Award, Dr. Lee has been awarded more than a dozen teaching grants and has been selected for fellowships focused on community engagement, applied learning, diversity and inclusion, interprofessional collaboration, and online learning.
Having authored more than 20 publications, Dr. Lee is the co-developer of the Self-Care Practices Scale published in 2019 in Social Work. She was selected for the Emerging Leaders Program through the Association of American State Colleges and Universities in 2018, as well as an Engaged Faculty Scholar through the North Carolina Chapter of Campus Compact in 2017 to advance civic engagement efforts at UNCW.
Dr. Lee developed and teaches a undergraduate/graduate cross-listed course entitled, Mindfulness: Implications for Personal Wellbeing and Professional Practice, and regularly incorporates a focus on mindfulness, self-care and resilience in her teaching. A licensed clinical social worker, Dr. Lee is trained in a variety of clinical and non-clinical mindfulness-based interventions, having learned from leaders in the field including Jon Kabat-Zinn, Kristin Neff, Christopher Germer, and Steven Hayes, and trainers at the Oxford University Mindfulness Centre in Oxford, England.
Dr. Lee earned her doctorate in social work in 2012 from the University of Georgia and holds graduate certificates in university teaching; alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs (ATOD); and gerontology.
Beverley McGuire, Ph.D. is a professor of East Asian Religions in the Philosophy and Religion Department and joined UNCW in 2010. She has a Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University, an M.Div. from Harvard Divinity School, an M.S. in Instructional Technology from UNCW, and a B.A. in Comparative Literature from Stanford University.
Her research interests include religion and digital media, the history of Chinese religions, religious practice and karma. Her book Living Karma: The Religious Practices of Ouyi Zhixu (Columbia University Press, 2014) examines the karmic worldview of an eminent Chinese Buddhist monk, and his practices of divination, repentance, vows, burning and bloodwriting.
She has published articles on Buddhist board games, Buddhist blogs, karmic memes, and Buddhist and Christian responses to natural disasters. She has also published scholarship on teaching and learning about online learning, experiential learning, and digital privacy, digital ethics, and digital literacy. She is participating in the Public Theologies of Technology and Presence program sponsored by the Luce Foundation as well as the Sacred Writes media partnership with Tricycle magazine.
Dr. McGuire teaches courses on mindfulness, Asian religions, Buddhism, Chinese religions, Japanese religions, religious views of death and dying, and philosophical and religious perspectives on happiness. She frequently incorporates experiential and contemplative learning into her teaching. She is a certified mindfulness teacher (through the Mindfulness Training Institute) and a certified yoga teacher (through Wilmington Yoga Center), and she has been practicing Vipassana meditation and Vinyasa yoga since 2000.
Anne Pemberton was co-founder of Mindful UNCW and co-led the initiative in its first year (2020-21). She was the Associate Director of Research and Instructional Services and Library Assessment at UNCW's Randall Library, where she had been a librarian/faculty member since 2003.
She held a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of Tennessee, a Master of Science in Information Sciences from UT, and a Master of Science in Instructional Technology from UNCW. Her thesis was titled, "The Impact of Personalized Learning on Motivation in Online Learning." At UNCW, she taught First-Year Seminar, Honors College seminars, and created the three-credit hour course "LIB 103: Introduction to Library Research and Technology," which she taught for 10 years. She provided instruction to more than 24,000 people (mainly undergraduate students) through 1,300 workshops on various information literacy concepts. She served as an academic advisor, Faculty Senator, chair and member of several campus committees, and was active in professional organizations including the American Library Association.
Pemberton authored and co-authored numerous publications focusing on academic libraries including the co-authored book, How to Write and Get Published: A Practical Guide for Librarians (2019). Her presentations at the local, state, national, and international level covered topics relating to assessment in libraries, mindful leadership, and technologies used in academic libraries. Prior to coming to UNCW, she served as the Social Sciences Librarian at UT and prior to that, Library Fellow at North Carolina State University.
Pemberton's interest in mindfulness started as an undergraduate student in psychology in the 1990s while working with a faculty member studying hypnosis. She used mindfulness as both a coping strategy and as a framework for relating to her mother, who suffered with Multiple Sclerosis. Many years later, on the recommendation of a therapist, Pemberton began using mindfulness to address her own mental health struggles to work on healing from trauma, depression and anxiety. Recognizing that mindfulness could also play a role in leadership and mentoring, she began incorporating mindfulness more holistically into both personal and professional life and came to view mindfulness as a way of life rather than a set of individual practices. Her blog, "The Hopeful Librarian," discussed connections between mindfulness, information literacy and racial justice.