Hosts
Dr. Charles Ross
Charles D. Ross has been at Longwood since 1992, serving as Professor of Physics, Chair of the Department of Natural Sciences and currently as Dean of the Cook-Cole College of Arts and Sciences. He was awarded a bachelor’s degree in Nuclear Engineering, a master’s degree in Engineering Physics and a doctorate in Materials Science from the University of Virginia. He won the Maria Bristow Starke Award for Faculty Excellence at Longwood in 2002.
Along with colleagues at the University of Virginia, he was a co-author of a five million dollar National Science Foundation grant involving work on nanotechnology. He has written three books involving the role of science and engineering in military history. This work has led to appearances on The History Channel, The National Geographic Channel, Public Broadcasting System and National Public Radio and a consultancy with the FBI and LAPD.
Charles is married with two children and lives in Farmville.
Dr. David Coles
David Coles is an Associate Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History, Political Science, and Philosophy at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia, where he teaches classes relating to American History, including the American Revolution, the Old South, the Civil War, and World War II.
Dr. Coles has received several teaching awards, including the Junior Faculty Award, the Student’s Faculty Recognition Award, and the Fuqua Excellence in Teaching Award. He has a Ph.D. in American History from Florida State University, and has published a number of articles and book chapters and is the associate compiler of the six-volume Biographical Roster of Florida’s Union and Confederate Soldiers, the associate editor of the Encyclopedia of the American Civil War, and the co-author of Sons of Garibaldi in Blue and Gray: Italians in the American Civil War, and the forthcoming Powder, Lead, and Cold Steel: The Civil War Letters of John H. Black.
David is married with two children and lives in Farmville, Virginia.
Dr. Jim Jordan
Dr. James William Jordan was professor of anthropology and sociology and founder of the Archaeology Field School at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia, where he taught from 1978 until 2018. He received his B.S. degree in his home state of Pennsylvania. After serving three years as a Lieutenant in the U.S. Army Medical Service Corps, he began graduate work at the University of Connecticut where he received Master of Arts Degrees in both Anthropology and Sociology. He was awarded his Ph. D. in Anthropology from the University of Georgia in 1976.
In addition to his teaching and research, Dr. Jordan served for three years as the Executive Director of THe Nature Camp of Virginia and twelve years as a Naturalist for Virginia State Parks. He also served as a technical consultant for the Fox Television Network program, Bones.
Dr. Jordan was the Chief Faculty Marshal of Longwood University and lead all academic ceremonies. He has been honored by the Senate and House of Delegates of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia in Joint House-Senate Resolution 18 in 1992 for “outstanding services to the citizens of Virginia and the the discipline of archeology in his teaching and research on the earliest inhabitants of the Commonwealth”. Dr. Jordan was selected The Virginia Professor of the Year in 1995 by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Princeton, New Jersey. In 2012 the Board of Visitors of Longwood University honored him by naming the Longwood Archaeology Field School the Dr. James W. Jordan Archaeology Field School.