Ziyao Ma
Ziyao Ma, Ph.D., serves as an assistant professor in the Department of History at Metropolitan State University of Denver.
Department: History
William James Parker III
William James Parker III, Ph.D., is an adjunct professor in the History Department at Metropolitan State University of Denver.
Alex Boodrookas
Alex Boodrookas, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of History at Metropolitan State University of Denver.
Derek Everett
Xiansheng Tian
Andrew Muldoon
Andrew R. Muldoon, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of History at Metropolitan State University of Denver. He specializes in colonial South Asia, the British Empire, modern Britain and modern Ireland and is fluent in all aspects of modern British and Irish history, politics and culture.
Muldoon is the author of “Empire, Politics and the Creation of the 1935 India Act: Last Act of the Raj,” published in 2009, and his current project is a study of soldiers’ experience in India and Burma in World War II.
Muldoon received a doctorate in history from Washington University in St. Louis and masters of philosophy in European studies from Cambridge University.
Matthew S. Makley
Matthew S. Makley, Ph.D., is a professor and chair in the Department of History at Metropolitan State University of Denver. His areas of expertise include modern U.S. history, U.S. history, U.S. West, Indigenous history and Native American history.
Makley has been teaching at MSU Denver for over 10 years. He also taught courses at Arizona State University while earning his doctorate. He received the prestigious 2016 Faculty Senate Teaching Excellence Award for Tenured Faculty and a Teaching Excellence award in 2017.
Makley published a book titled “The Small Shall be Strong: A History of Lake” that was published by the University of Massachusetts Press in 2018. He also co-authored the book, “Cave Rock: Climbers, Courts and a Washoe Indian Sacred Site,” which was published by the University of Nevada Press in 2010 and has a current manuscript titled, “The Small Shall be Strong: A History of Lake Tahoe’s Washoe Indians,” that is being published by the University of Massachusetts Press. He also helped produce a short documentary about an Iris farm and its relationship with water in Boulder, Colorado called “Long’s Gardens: An Urban Oasis.”
Makley received his doctorate and master’s in history specializing in Native American history, and the history of the American West from California State University and a bachelor’s in history from Humboldt University.
Stephen Leonard
Stephen Leonard, Ph.D., is an emeritus professor in the Department of History at Metropolitan State University of Denver. His areas of research and expertise focus on the history of Colorado, Denver, and the United States. He is currently teaching Colorado and the Nation.
Leonard has been teaching history at MSU Denver since August 1966 and has no plans of retiring. He also served for 15 years on the Denver Landmark Commission.
Leonard has authored or co-authored nine books in his time at MSU Denver. One of them, “Trial and Triumphs,” a history of the Depression in 1930s Colorado, won several awards; another, “Lynching in Colorado, 1859-1919,” was well-received in the scholarly community. His book “Colorado: A History of the Centennial State” is a popular college-level textbook. More recently, Leonard co-authored “A Short History of Denver” in 2016.
Leonard received his doctorate in American History from Claremont Graduate School in 1971, his master’s in American Studies from the University of Wyoming in 1965, and his bachelor’s in History from Regis College in 1964.
Todd Laugen
Todd Laugen teaches American History since 1865, methods of teaching social sciences and emergence-modern U.S. 1877–1920 at Metropolitan State University of Denver.
Laugen’s recent publications include “The Gospel of Progressivism: Moral Reform and Labor War in Colorado, 1900–1930,” which details the fight against corporate and political corruption in Colorado during the early 20th century. Recent papers include “Worker Mobilization, Management Resistance: 1920s,” and “Struggles for the Public Interest: Organized Labor and State Mediation in the 1920s.”
He specializes in American history after 1865, including politics, labor, women and the west. As a former high school history and government teacher, Laugen remains interested in history education and the preparation of effective teachers.
Kim Klimek
Kimberly Klimek, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of History at Metropolitan State University of Denver. She teaches courses on the history of medieval England, medieval Europe, history of European women, medieval world, world civilizations to 1500 and women in world history.
Klimek has been teaching at MSU Denver since 2006. She received the Outstanding Women’s Award from MSU Denver’s Institute for Women’s Studies and Services in 2016. Klimek is a council member of Medieval Association of the Pacific, academic consultant for Professional Decorative Painter’s Association, member of Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association and member of Society of Medieval Feminist Scholars.
Her research interests include the intersections between gender and intellectual history, with a particular focus on women and their impact on historical writing. Klimek is also interested in mysticism, particularly as it relates to philosophical, intellectual, and gendered identities. She is currently working on projects surrounding a text in medieval world history, the use of graphic novels in history classrooms; and PTSD and medieval Crusade veterans. Klimek authored a chapter titled “War. War Never Changes: Using Popular Culture to Teach Traumatic Events” in the 2018 textbook “Leadership, Popular Culture, and Social Change.” She has also presented her work at many conferences and formal presentations around the country and in England.
Klimek received her doctorate in medieval and early modern history from University of New Mexico in 2009, a master’s in history from Colorado State University in 1997 and a bachelor’s cum laude in history and theatre from University of Colorado, Colorado Springs in 1993.