Professor Tom Lennon is the Department Chair of the Emergency Management and Homeland Security Department at Mass Maritime. He joined the faculty in 2010 after serving on active duty with the U. S. Navy and Coast Guard for 25 years. His areas of emphasis include international relief and maritime security. Professor Lennon has developed several international education programs and exchanges for Mass Maritime including programs in Haiti, Guatemala, and Denmark.
Professor Lennon’s military assignments included positions supporting Coast Guard and Department of Defense operations and missions worldwide including two deployments to the Middle East. Professor Lennon also held faculty positions and/or senior leadership positions at the United States Coast Guard Academy, at the Naval Justice School, and with the Defense Institute of International Legal Studies. He also served as adjunct faculty at the Naval War College, and has lectured at institutions and at conferences throughout the world including multiple locations in South America, Africa, Europe, and
Rear Admiral Francis X. McDonald, USMS, is the President of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, one of six state maritime academies in the country. Founded in 1891, the Academy has been training business leaders, ship captains, engineers, and professional officers in the 19th, 20th, and now the 21st century. Offering seven undergraduate and three graduate majors, the Academy is one of two “special mission” public universities in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Upon graduation from the Academy in 1985, McDonald pursued an engineering career and earned a Master of Science in Management from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He returned to his alma mater in 1995 to serve as Director of Cooperative Education, a role in which he developed and implemented the cooperative education program and dramatically increased placement rates for undergraduate interns and graduating seniors. Appointed as Dean of Enrollment Management in 1999, he led the rebranding of the Academy which resulted in a dramatic increase in numbers and diversity of incoming freshmen. He has since served as Vice President for Operations, heading up a major campus building expansion, and as Executive Vice President. President McDonald holds a Doctor of Law and Policy from Northeastern University and has served as an adjunct professor in the Academy’s emergency management graduate program. He assumed the role of President in August 2015 following unanimous votes of the MMA Board of Trustees and the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education, with the rank of Rear Admiral conferred by the U.S. Maritime Administrator. President McDonald is active in or has served on several community and professional organizations including the Governor’s STEM Advisory Council, Cape Cod Canal Region Chamber of Commerce, Barnstable School Committee, Sturgis Charter School, Cape Cod Collaborative, and the Marine Society at Salem. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, President McDonald now resides in Marstons Mills with his wife Beth and their two children Kathryn and Harrison.
- Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Loyola University, New Orleans
- Master of Science and Ph.D. in Emergency Management from North Dakota State University
- Dr. Samantha Montano is currently an assistant professor of Emergency Management at the Academy. Montano does research on a variety of topics related to emergency management including disaster volunteerism, the role of the nonprofit sector in disaster, the relationship between emergency management and climate change, and the intersection of gender and disasters. In addition to research, she does science communication work and emergency management policy advocacy.
- Current courses: Introduction to Emergency Management and Consequence Management
- Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Bridgewater State University
- Master of Arts in Political Science from University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Ph.D. in Political Science from University of Connecticut
- Dr. Valla joined Massachusetts Maritime Academy's Emergency Management Department in 2016 after completing a career with the FBI as an intelligence analyst. During his tenure with the FBI, Dr. Valla provided intelligence analysis on most of the major terrorism investigations conducted by the FBI's Boston Field Office which included the 9/11 attacks and the Boston Marathon Bombing. Dr. Valla also served as a military intelligence officer with the U.S. Army Reserve and retired as a Major in 2004. His final assignment before retiring was as an instructor at the Joint Military Intelligence College - now the National Intelligence University. While there, he taught graduate courses in intelligence analysis, terrorism, and analytic methodology, as well as other national security topics.
- When not teaching, Dr. Valla enjoys running, hiking, working out, white-water rafting, and foreign language study. He is an avid science fiction fan. A lifelong resident of Massachusetts, he grew up in Kingston and now resides in Taunton.
A baptized non-denominational Christian
Bachelor of Science in Electronic Engineering from Fudan University, Shanghai, China
Bachelor of Arts (Honors) in Applied Disaster and Emergency Studies from Brandon University, Brandon, Manitoba, Canada
Master of Science in Disaster Science and Management from University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware
Ph.D. in Civil Engineering with direction of Societal Risk Management from University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Urbana, Illinois
Postdoc at Jackson State University, Jackson, Mississippi; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina; and Chapman University, Orange, California
Dr. Wang is currently serving as an Assistant Professor of Emergency Management at the Academy. His research topics include social vulnerability, hazard modeling, risk assessment, loss prediction, equivalency of hazard intensity, nowcasting of weather events, and media coverage of disasters. His methodological tools involve data science, machine learning, geographic information science, remote sensing, and qualitative approaches. Dr. Wang has been working on earthquake, flood, heavy rainfall, lightning, tropical cyclone, wildfire, and extraterrestrial hazard; as well as disaster risks within a multi-hazard context.
