Faculty Recharged: New Faces Abound in A&S

With apologies to legendary crooner

Tom Jones

, we ask, “What’s new, Bearcat?”

Here in the McMicken College of Arts & Sciences, plenty of new little Bearcat noses, that’s what. There are 47 new faculty members (including 41 PhDs) for the 2012-13 academic year. To help you welcome them to the

A&S family

, here’s a list of new members with brief details on their background:

Gwen Arnold

; assistant professor; political science; environmental policy; Aug. 15; PhD, Indiana University

Zhuo Ban

; assistant professor; communication; public relations; Aug. 15; PhD, Purdue University

Jeffrey Blevins

; department head and associate professor; journalism; journalism; Aug. 15; PhD, Ohio University, 2001

Vita Borovyk

; educator assistant professor; math; mathematics; Aug. 15; PhD, University of Missouri, Columbia, 2008

Andrew Brown

; educator assistant professor; Center for Organizational Leadership, Department of Psychology; organizational leadership and human resources; Aug. 15; PhD, University of Cincinnati

Barbara Burrell

; associate professor with tenure; classics; classical archaeology; Aug. 15; PhD, Harvard, 1980

Charles Casey-Leininger

; educator assistant professor; history; public history; Aug. 15; PhD, University of Cincinnati, 1993

Anthony P. Chemero

; professor with tenure; philosophy and psychology; cognitive science; Aug. 15; PhD, Indiana University, 1999

Mark Plano Clark

; educator associate professor; Physics and CECH; experimental atomic physics; Aug. 15; PhD, University of North Carolina, 1988

Ashley Currier

; assistant professor; Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; sexuality studies and African/African-American studies; Aug. 15; PhD, University of Pittsburgh, 2007

Andrew Czaja

; assistant professor; geology; biogeochemistry; Aug. 15; PhD, University of California, Los Angeles, 2006

Christina Erbacher

; educator assistant professor; math; mathematics; Aug. 15; PhD, North Carolina State University

Aryay Finkelstein

; assistant professor; Judaic studies; Judaic studies; Aug. 15; PhD, Harvard University,  2011

Lauren Ginsberg

; assistant professor; classics; Greek and Latin; Aug. 15; PhD, Brown University, 2011

Michael Gott

; assistant professor; romance languages; French; Aug. 15; PhD, University of Texas, Austin, 2011

Robert Haug

; assistant professor; history; Islamic world; Aug. 15; PhD, University of Michigan, 2010

Gergana Ivanova

; assistant professor; Asian studies; Japanese; Aug. 15; all but dissertation (ABD), University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Yu-Juan Jien

; educator assistant professor; math; computational finance; Aug. 15; PhD, Purdue University, 2008

Andrew Lewis

; assistant professor; political science; American politics; Aug. 15; PhD, American University, 2011

Vladislav Litosh

; research assistant professor; chemistry; medicinal chemistry; Aug. 15; PhD, Rice University, 2002

Ervin Matthew

; assistant professor; sociology; urban inequality; Aug. 15; PhD, The Ohio State University

Sarah Mayorga

; assistant professor; sociology; urban inequality; Aug. 15; PhD, Duke University

Holly McGee

; assistant professor; history; 20th century history; Aug. 15; PhD, University Wisconsin-Madison, 2011

Joshua Miller

; research assistant professor; geology; Quaternary and Anthropocene science; Aug. 15; PhD, University of Chicago, 2009

Daniel Murphy

; assistant professor; anthropology; sociocultural anthropology; Aug. 15; PhD, University of Kentucky, 2011

Furaha Norton

; assistant professor; English; American ethnic literature; Aug. 15; PhD, Cornell University, 2002

Carolyn Peterson

; educator instructor; WGSS; human sexuality; Aug. 15; MA, University of Cincinnati, 2006

Kathryn Rafferty

; educator assistant professor; biological sciences; cell and molecular biology; Jan. 23; PhD, Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University

Laura Sagle

; assistant professor; chemistry; physical chemistry; Aug. 15; PhD, University of California, San Diego, 2006

Rebecca Sanders

; assistant professor; political science; international relations; Aug. 15; PhD, University of Toronto

Shaunak Sastry

; assistant professor; communication; health communication; Aug. 15; ABD, Purdue University

Matia Solomon

; assistant professor; psychology and psychiatry, College of Medicine; neuroscience; Aug. 15; PhD, Georgia State University, 2006

Alexandre Sousa

; assistant professor; physics; high energy physics; Aug. 15; PhD, Tufts University, 2005

Anne Vonderheide

; educator assistant professor; chemistry; organic and biochemistry; Aug. 15; PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2003

Vanessa Walker

; educator assistant professor; history; history of the US; Aug. 15; PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2011

Yizao Wang

; assistant professor; math; probability; Aug. 15; PhD, University of Michigan

Dylan Ward

; assistant professor; geology; numerical modeler; Aug. 15; PhD, University of Colorado at Boulder, 2010

Valerie Weinstein

; assistant professor; German studies; German studies; Aug. 15; PhD, Cornell University, 2000

Guy-Lucien Whembolua

; assistant professor; Africana studies; health policy and management; Aug. 15; PhD, Pennsylvania state University, 2008

Michael Widener

; assistant professor; geography; human environment interactions and GIScience; Aug. 15; PhD, State University of New York, University at Buffalo

Ju-Yi Yen

; assistant professor; math; financial mathematics; Aug. 15; PhD, University of Maryland, 2001

Jeffrey Zalar

; assistant professor; history; Catholic studies; Aug. 15; PhD, Georgetown University, 2002

Visiting Faculty

Hsing-yi Kao

; visiting assistant professor; history; East and South Asian history; Aug. 15; PhD, University of Chicago, IL, 2012

Yajun Liu

; visiting assistant professor/visiting instructor; math; math/statistics; Aug. 15; ABD, University of Missouri

Rose MacLean

; visiting assistant professor; classics; ancient history; Aug. 15; ABD, Princeton University

Frank Rzeczkowski

; visiting assistant professor; history; US survey; Aug. 15; PhD, Northwestern, 2003

Chang Xu

; visiting assistant professor/instructor; math; math/statistics; Aug. 15; ABD, University of Missouri