Scholars of the Roundtable

Dr. Derek Breid, associate professor of engineering in the Herbert W. Boyer School of Natural Sciences, Mathematics, and Computing, in late 2025 was named the James F. Will Endowed Chair of Engineering and chair of the Department of Engineering. The Chair is named in honor of Will, C’60, who served from 2000-06 as the College’s fifteenth president. 

Breid’s research focuses on soft materials mechanics, and especially smart materials that change shape or other properties in response to external stimulus. One project involves working with Brianna Sciore, a senior at Saint Vincent, and collaborators at the University of Pittsburgh. The lab at Pitt fabricates a class of material called “liquid crystal elastomers,” Breid explains, which exhibit “interesting properties,” including the ability to change shape when an electric field is applied. The researchers are trying to document how much useful mechanical work they can get out of these materials when they are actuated. “To answer that question, we need to measure very small forces because the moving devices they make are only about as thick as a piece of paper,” Breid says. 

The second project involves the development of a soft robotic actuator that twists. The researchers’ goal is to modify the design of the structure so that it twists as it collapses, Breid says, demonstrating a new kind of motion for this type of device. Students assisted with the project the past few semesters as researchers had to rethink the kind of mold needed to make devices that would twist. “I hope to continue to work on research in this area that involves students as I see research opportunities as a key part of the education that we provide,” Breid says.

Rabbi Jamie Gibson brings more than forty years of interfaith experience to the Rabbi Jason Z. Edelstein Endowed Chair in Catholic-Jewish Dialogue, a programmatic chair established to build on the common spiritual heritage of Christians and Jews. “My goal was to bring understanding of Judaism as part of the roots of Christianity to undergrads who have never met a Jewish person in their lives,” Gibson says, “who had no idea what Judaism stood for, and why Jews never accepted Jesus as their Lord and savior.” One third of the rabbi’s classes in the School of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (AHSS) feature students who are unchurched and unversed in Christian roots and source texts, prompting him to cover the basics of Christianity and Judaism, as well as the conflicts and agreed-on issues between the two faiths. “So far, I’ve quantified my success by the number of students who have said that my course was probably the most unique of any that they had taken at Saint Vincent because it required them to regard a completely different worldview and religious perspective,” Gibson adds.

In the future, he hopes to schedule trips to visit the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.

Dr. Jason Jividen holds the Philip M. McKenna Endowed Chair in American and Western Political Thought, supported by the Philip M. McKenna Foundation and dedicated to promoting an understanding of Western political thought and the tradition of the American founding and civic institutions. Named to the Chair in fall 2022, the subjects of Jividen’s research—resulting in multiple articles and academic conference papers—have largely been American political thought with interests in the American founding, Alexis de Tocqueville, Abraham Lincoln, and Progressivism. Key among that work has been a continued assessment of the appeal to Lincoln’s words and statesmanship among progressive academics, journalists, and politicians. “At this stage in my career, these last few projects are especially important to me,” Jividen says. 

To help foster civic education, Jividen, who also serves as chair of the Political Science Department in the Alex G. McKenna School of Business, Economics, and Government, is working with organizations such as Teaching American History, a project of the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University, to get primary source material into the hands of teachers and their students. “The close reading and Socratic discussion of primary texts in political science and civics is the key goal,” he explains. “This is an area where my research and teaching interests coincide and enrich one another.”

Dr. Helen K. Burns, RN, joined the College in April 2023 as the Rev. Owen Roth, O.S.B., Inaugural Chair of the Department of Nursing, named in honor of the former faculty member who taught embryology, comparative anatomy, and histology and served as chair of the Department of Biology from 1969-1976. 

In the role, Burns was tasked with developing and subsequently directing the College’s nursing program housed in the Boyer School. Saint Vincent’s Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree program received state approval in November 2023 and admitted its first students in fall 2024; the College also earned state approval in July 2024 for its Direct Entry – Master of Science in Nursing program and accepted its first cohort of students in summer 2025. Burns received the 14th annual Projektenmacher Award in 2024 as the Department rapidly grew under her direction. 

Burns is well known in the area’s healthcare industry, previously serving as senior vice president and chief nursing officer with Excela Health, for which she led and grew the nursing programs across the system.

Burns also served as assistant dean for clinical education at the University of Pittsburgh and deputy secretary for health planning and assessment for the Pennsylvania Department of Health.