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Pepperdine | Community

Heidelberg

Program Staff

melissa

Melissa Swann

melissa.swann@pepperdine.edu

Director of Heidelberg Program

martina

Martina Drefs

martina.drefs@pepperdine.edu

Program Assistant

Christina Wuttke

 Christina Wuttke

christina.wuttke@pepperdine.edu

Assistant Director

Eyal Pinkas

Eyal Pinkas 

eyal.pinkas@pepperdine.edu

Manager of Operations and Student Care
Instructor of Humanities and Fine Arts 

Faculty-in-Residence 2025-2026

John Struloeff

Dr. John Struloeff

john.struloeff@pepperdine.edu

Professor of Creative Writing and English
Director of Creative Writing

John Struloeff is the director of the Creative Writing Program at Seaver College, where he has been a professor since Fall 2007. He is a widely published poet and fiction writer, with work in The Atlantic, The Sun, Western Humanities Review, The Literary Review, The American Journal of Poetry, and dozens of other magazines and journals, and from 2020-2021, he served as the City of Malibu’s Poet Laureate. John’s most recent book is a collection of biographical poems, The Work of a Genius, about the life and work of Albert Einstein, inspired by research he conducted in Germany, Switzerland, Prague (Charles University), and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. He loves to travel and study history and visit the places that have inspired literary work. During the 2017-18 academic year, he was the Visiting Faculty for IP in Lausanne, Switzerland — a profound and inspiring experience for him — and is excited to return to Europe to join a new group of students in Heidelberg.

Faculty-in-Residence 2026-2027