05/06/2025
Two SUNY Cortland professors will join the State University of New York’s Distinguished Faculty, earning promotion to the system’s highest academic rank following their recent approval by the State University Board of Trustees.
The distinguished rank recognizes full professors who have demonstrated careers of excellence in research and scholarship, service and teaching.
The university’s honored faculty for 2025 are:
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Distinguished Teaching Professor Caroline Kaltefleiter of the Communication and Media Studies Department.
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Distinguished Professor Mechthild Nagel of the Philosophy Department.
They are among 40 Cortland faculty members — current and retired — who have been named to the SUNY Distinguished Academy, which aims to promote academic excellence by highlighting the skills, expertise and talents of high-achieving faculty.
Caroline Kaltefleiter
For more than 23 years, Kaltefleiter has inspired SUNY Cortland students to become talented communications and media professionals while motivating them to make a difference in their communities through hands-on work. She is highly regarded on campus for her creative and memorable teaching methods that speak to student interests.
“Dr. Kaltefleiter’s impact is seen and felt in unique ways,” wrote President Erik J. Bitterbaum. “These include transformative projects promoting community activism, countless hours mentoring students associated with our campus radio station and the successful careers of graduates reflecting values she embodies — communication, critical thinking and empathy among them.”
Kaltefleiter joined the university’s Communication and Media Studies Department in 2001 as department chair and an associate professor, earning a promotion to full professor in 2011. She also served as program coordinator for the Women’s Studies and Gender Studies Program from 2004 to 2014. Kaltefleiter taught previously at Morningside University in Sioux City, lowa, where she served as department chair and associate professor.
She holds an A.B.J. in broadcast journalism from the University of Georgia, an M.A. in mass communication from Miami University and a Ph.D. in journalism and mass communication from the Scripps College of Communication at Ohio University.
Kaltefleiter’s doctoral work and subsequent scholarship have addressed communication outreach within the Riot Grrrl network, a revolutionary musical, feminist, political and social justice movement that started in the 1990s. That research on alternative media in women’s and gender studies has also spurred student work grounded in advocacy and community engagement — creating a bridge between her scholarship and teaching.
Kaltefleiter has made significant contributions to the field of girls’ studies, evidenced by her leadership of an international conference in 2010, “Reimagining Girlhood: Communities, Identities, Self-Portrayals,” which drew more than 150 participants from across the globe. “At that time, Dr. Kaltefleiter envisioned what could be achieved by bringing together a diverse and interdisciplinary group of scholars from around the world,” wrote Sharon Mazzarella, professor of communication studies at James Madison University, referring to the event as “instrumental to the overall ‘coalescing’ of the field.”
Kaltefleiter’s publication titles underscore this career-long scholarship, and they include her 2024 book chapter, “(Re)Visiting a Girl Revolution: Riot Grrrl Zines, Liminality and Anarcha-Feminism” in The Routledge Companion to Girls’ Studies, which examines communication within the underground feminist punk scene including zines, independent record labels and radio stations used by members of the movement. In the past five years alsone, she has contributed to two edited anthologies, published five refereed book chapters, served as a book series editor and joined editorial boards for two journals.
Her scholarship also has been shared through invited addresses and presentations in 10 countries including Denmark, Hungary and the United Kingdom. Students also have co-authored publications and conference papers. In 2019, Kaltefleiter and Karmelisha Alexander ’18 contributed the book chapter “Self Care and Community: Black Girls Saving Themselves” to Black Girls and Black Girlhood.
Letters of support from former students and faculty colleagues address the student action projects that make Kaltefleiter’s lessons meaningful. These learning experiences take place through high-impact media campaigns and initiatives, including a multiyear effort from 2012 to 2016 that helped secure more than $1.2 million to help save the Wickwire Pool in the city of Cortland for community children and families. Other efforts have helped community members overcome challenges related to food insecurity and transportation while instilling a sense of civic and social responsibility in students.
Since 2013, Kaltefleiter has served as executive director and faculty advisor for WSUC-FM, SUNY Cortland’s National Public Radio affiliate, where she helps equip students with communication and critical analysis skills that are valuable in any career. A media scholar and former broadcast journalist, she also has established “The Digital Divide,” an hourlong, student-produced broadcast that examines current topics in media and digital culture.
In 2023, Kaltefleiter was named a champion fellow by the University of Vermont’s Center for Community News, which has inspired podcasting projects to help students understand the importance of local reporting. This experience has proven student-centered and valuable to the larger community.
Kaltefleiter also earned SUNY Cortland’s Faculty Connection Award in 2008, the Stephen J. Barnes Outstanding Faculty Member Award in 2010 and the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2017.
“As a teacher-scholar, Dr. Kaltefleiter’s interdisciplinary approach goes beyond communication and media to history, gender and women’s studies,” Bitterbaum wrote. “Her assignments and course structures frequently respond to lived experiences of the moment, from social justice-related topics to the limitations of the COVID-19 pandemic. And perhaps most importantly, her work spurs excellence in others.”
Mechthild Nagel
Throughout her 26-year career at SUNY Cortland, Nagel has earned a reputation as a respected scholar in the field of philosophy, more specifically in the aesthetics of play and the areas of feminist theory, Africana studies and critical prison studies. Colleagues praise her interdisciplinary sophistication, social consciousness and international appeal.
She holds a B.A. in philosophy, Chinese and Latin from Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, in Freiburg, Germany, an M.A. in philosophy from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She was named an assistant professor in 1999, earning promotions to associate professor in 2002 and full professor in 2006, while also making significant contributions to the university’s Africana Studies Department for many years.
Her scholarly output covers nearly 70 refereed journal articles and book chapters, 21 book reviews, six encyclopedic entries and 10 books in total, including seven anthologies and three monographs. She also founded and serves as editor-in-chief for Wagadu, an open-access journal on women’s and gender studies that has published 24 volumes since 2004.
She also is the sole author responsible for making updates to “Feminist Perspectives on Class and Work” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as well as a reviewer for 29 journals and 14 academic presses and a constant source of expertise when it comes to promoting diversity, equity and inclusion across the state, the nation and the globe. Nagel also has contributed to the planning and organization of 13 conferences across the world, including multiple statewide diversity conferences and others dedicated to the philosophy of play in Spain and Czech Republic.
Her 2023 monograph, Ludic Ubuntu Ethics: Decolonizing Justice, was nominated for the 2024 North American Society for Social Philosophy Book Award. In 2024, she co-authored Reframing Diversity and Inclusive Leadership: Race, Gender and Institutional Change, a text that strives to address challenges related to racism and sexism on college campuses as well as the crucial role that educational leaders can assume in advancing social justice. This monograph also was a finalist for the 2024 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in its education category.
“Dr. Nagel is well-suited to lead conversations on inclusive leadership because she possesses a unique cross-cultural perspective,” wrote Bitterbaum. “While topics such as critical race theory and Black feminism have received significant mainstream attention in recent years, Dr. Nagel has studied them for decades in the U.S. and abroad.”
For many years, Nagel’s scholarship has explored the potential of “Ubuntu,” the Zulu word that describes a vision of shared humanity. She coined the term ludic Ubuntu ethics, which examines justice and provides an alternative to a popular duty-based approach in philosophy by drawing on African and Indigenous peace-building philosophies. The ability to combine interests in prison studies and the aesthetics of play made Nagel the first social philosopher to explore these areas together.
Suad Joseph ’66, a distinguished research professor of anthropology at the University of California, Davis, refers to Nagel as “a world leader at the intersection of philosophy and criminal justice” and a scholar whose work appeals not only to philosophers but Africanists, anthropologists and critical criminologists. International colleagues point to her groundbreaking and engaged work on the prison industrial complex, and they commend her willingness to study criminal justice through face-to-face interaction with those who have been imprisoned.
Nagel has delivered 38 invited talks and 11 keynotes across 16 countries while earning three international fellowships throughout her career: as a German Academic Exchange Service visiting professor at Hochschule Fulda; a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen, Germany; and a research fellow in the Continental Philosophy Department at Czech Academy of the Sciences in Prague.
Her individual honors include the Transformative Justice Scholar-Activist of the Year Award from the Save the Kids Organization in 2022 and the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Research and Creative Activities in 2016. Institutional recognition for her scholarship includes the 2003 Excellence in Research and Scholarship Award; 2009 Outstanding Achievement in Research Award; 2012 Excellence in Research, Scholarship and Outreach Award; and the 2022 Dr. Peter A. DiNardo ’68 and Judith Waring Outstanding Achievement in Research Award.