Rory Walsh, PhD, and Howard Tsai, PhD are educators, mentors, and certified wellness professionals with decades of experience in higher education. We are dedicated to helping university students because their degrees have the power to substantially change their lives for the better–when students feel empowered to get the most out of them.
Rory Walsh, PhD
Rory Walsh was an AMAZING instructor. She believed in us all as
Student evaluation of Korean Studies 392 / Environmental Studies 304, Winter 2023 at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
individual students and kept our well–being at the focus of the class. This is my favorite course that I have ever taken.
Rory earned her doctorate in 2017 from the University of Oregon. She spend five years at the University of Michigan leading the Undergraduate Research Fellows Program for the Nam Center for Korean Studies, and mentored dozens of students working on original research projects. She hosts two podcasts, “What Are Jobs? And How Do You Get Them?,” interviewing people with various jobs and educational backgrounds, and “How Did You Get Here?,” discussing the lives and research of prominent Korean Studies scholars.
Rory is an archaeologist who has worked in Korea and China, and is particularly proud of her book, “Mahan and Baekje: The Complex Origins of Korean Kingdoms,” and an article published in the journal Holocene and based on her own Masters thesis, “Millet grain morphometry as a tool for social inference: A case study from the Yiluo basin, China.” Rory is committed to overall student well-being, and holds a certification in Qigong, a holistic wellness practice based in Traditional Chinese Medicine.
Rory’s areas of specialty include: Asian Studies; Quantitative Data Analysis; Environmental Studies; Research Ethics; Human Subjects Research; Grant Writing; Research Design; Food Studies; Public Speaking; Career Placement
Howard Tsai, PhD
Howard was Lecturer of International Studies at the University of Michigan. During his time at the university he greatly enjoyed teaching his courses and mentoring students on their theses. His PhD research focused on the archaeology of Peru and the results of his investigations were published in his book Las Varas: Ethnicity and Ritual in the Ancient Andes (University of Alabama Press). He has published articles in peer-review journals and a book chapter in The Hidden Language of Graphic Signs (Stephen Houston and John Bodel, editors, Cambridge University Press). He has served as the guest editor for the article “The Earliest Adobe Monumental Architecture in the Americas” for Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.
Howard loves teaching and student evaluations of his courses reveal how much the students have enjoyed his class and appreciated the sense of humor he brings to the classroom. He is also a certified personal trainer (NSCF CPT, PPSC Performance, PPSC Functional Kettlebell) specialized in strength, hypertrophy, and conditioning. All in all he has taught and mentored a great variety of subjects and skills, ranging from Archaeology to Latin American History, International Relations to Global Food Supply, and now Strength Training/Conditioning to Nutrition Monitoring. Howard wants to apply what he learned in the fitness and wellness industry to higher learning and postgraduate study. Top performance demands accountability and structure, but equally important is rest, recovery, and wellness.
Howard’s areas of specialty include: Latin American Studies; Globalization; Indigenous Communities; Quantitative Data Analysis; Archaeology and Heritage; Ethnicity; Ritual; Grant Writing; Research Design; Fitness and Wellness; Strength and Hypertrophy; Diet and Nutrition Coaching