Jill Kriesky, Ph.D. Executive Director.
Phone: 304-243-6243
e-mail: jkriesky@wju.edu

In February of 2004, Kriesky became the Executive Director of the Clifford M. Lewis, S.J. Appalachian Institute at Wheeling Jesuit University. Prior to arriving here, Kriesky served for three years as the West Virginia University Director of the Office of Service Learning Programs and as the Executive Director of West Virginia Campus Compact. From 1988 to 2001, Kriesky worked as a university-based labor educator at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the University of Oregon, and West Virginia University. Her research agenda included studies of labor relations in the U.S. pulp and paper industry, labor-management participatory programs, labor union community coalitions, and union organizing through neutrality and card check agreements. Kriesky has also written on service learning in higher education based on her experiences in administering a five-year W.K. Kellogg Foundation grant to establish a WVU service-learning program across the state.
A native of St. Louis, Missouri, Kriesky holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of New Hampshire, a M.S. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and a B.A in Economics and Political Science from Grinnell College.

Brian O'Donnell, S.J., Ph.D. Research Director.
Phone: 304-243-6242
e-mail: odonnell@wju.edu

Fr. O’Donnell’s career with the Jesuits has twice placed him at Wheeling Jesuit University confronting Appalachian issues. From his observations of the economic distress in the Upper Ohio Valley in the early 1980s, he determined a course of study at M.I.T.’s “Science, Technology, and Society” program which enabled him to explore how de-industrialized regions dealt with drastic changes in economic underpinnings. His subsequent eight years of work at the University of Detroit Mercy were largely devoted to linking the institution with neighborhood and regional efforts at rejuvenating the southeast Michigan metropolitan region. In February of 2003, Fr. O’Donnell returned to Wheeling to join the staff of Wheeling Jesuit University’s Clifford M. Lewis, S.J. Appalachian Institute as Research Director.
Fr. O’Donnell earned a B.A. and M.A. in Modern European History from The Catholic University of America, and a Ph.D. in the History of Technology from M.I.T.