This academic year (2020-2021), 13 new tenure-stream faculty are joining the College of Arts & Sciences. They come to UNC Greensboro from across the the globe, bringing a diverse set of research experience – from Shaker dancing to geometry, German culture to parent-toddler communication.
“We’re excited to welcome these impressive faculty members to our community of teacher-scholars,” said Dr. John Z. Kiss, dean of the College of Arts & Sciences. “In CAS, we value strong researchers who contribute to their disciplines and who – with equal vigor – bring the excitement of their research into the classroom. I look forward to seeing where their academic careers at UNCG take them.”
Learn about their research areas here, as well as some interesting and unexpected facts:
Jonathan Chekan
Department: Chemistry and Biochemistry
Research areas: Natural product and drug discovery; chemical biology; protein engineering
Interesting fact: “I just moved to UNCG from San Diego where I worked 100 yards from the beach and could just walk out the building to collect marine samples for my research.”
Michiel van Veldhuizen
Department: Classical Studies
Research areas: Cultural and intellectual history of ancient Greece and Rome
Interesting fact: “My current research looks at the ways in which the ancient Greeks and Romans coped with disaster. The relevance of this topic became all too apparent to me this past spring, when, as a professor in Rome, I found myself suddenly in one of the strictest pandemic lock-downs in Europe.”
Chunjiang Zhu
Department: Computer Science
Research areas: Machine Learning; theory; drug discovery; network science
Interesting fact: “I heard about North Carolina when I was a kid (through NCAA men’s basketball), but I never expected that I would start my academic career here. This is exciting!”
Derek Palacio
Department: English
Research areas: Literary fiction; diaspora/exile narratives; religion in literature
Interesting fact: “For research on my current project, which involves Catholic mysticism, I have (and hopefully will again) visit monasteries for private retreats.”
Denisa Jashari
Department: History
Research areas: Latin American history; twentieth-century Chilean urban history; politics of the working poor
Interesting fact: “I was born and raised in Albania and first moved to Massachusetts before making my way to Connecticut, Indiana, and now, North Carolina. I first fell in love with Chile as a young study-abroad student in Santiago, an experience that motivated me to pursue graduate studies.”
Teresa Walch
Department: History
Research areas: Modern Europe; modern Germany; Holocaust studies; urban history
Interesting fact: “I have spent the past five years living abroad (in Germany and Israel) engaging in both academic historical research and public history. I am excited to return to the states, join UNCG and to contribute to its dedicated public outreach and wider community engagement in Greensboro.”
Derek Toomes
Department: Interior Architecture
Research areas: New media, using technological mediums as interventional forms and experiences within spaces in order to challenge assumptions about perceptual experience
Interesting fact: “I have quite a bit of mechanical aptitude, with an audacious touch, which has led me in recent years to explore the ‘metaphysics of quality,’ as I continually work on my ever expanding collection of vintage motorcycles.”
Faye Stewart
Department: Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
Research areas: German, Austrian, and Swiss literature, film, and culture, 20th and 21st centuries; Muslim studies; Islam in Europe; Human rights, asylum politics, and refugee experiences
Interesting fact: “In the summer of 2018, I spent a month in Vienna, Austria, the city where I studied abroad as an undergraduate in the 1990s, and I fell in love with Vienna all over again. I ate and drank my way through the city’s diverse dumpling, sausage, ice cream, and beer offerings while working with a team to author Grenzenlos Deutsch (German without borders), an inclusive, social justice-oriented, open educational resource for beginning German.”
Thomas Weighill
Department: Mathematics and Statistics
Research areas: Topology, geometry and their applications to data science
Interesting fact: “I was born and raised in Paarl, South Africa, home of the biggest schoolboy rugby match in the world.”
Andrew Engelhardt
Department: Political Science
Research areas: Public opinion; identities and politics; polarization
Interesting fact: “I’m a licensed amateur radio operator and while I’ve not been active much lately I’m looking forward to getting back into it.”
Margaret Fields-Olivieri
Department: Psychology
Research areas: Parent-toddler emotional and verbal communication processes; Early emotional and language development
Interesting fact: “My paternal grandparents were born and raised in Greensboro, so I am excited to set down my own roots here!”
Dana Logan
Department: Religious Studies
Research areas: American religion and ritual; history of evangelicalism; civil society in the nineteenth-century United States; the history of wellness.
Interesting fact: “Most recently I have been researching Shaker dancing in the mid-nineteenth century and Baptist discipline. I teach classes on the history of American religion, evangelicalism, ‘cults,’ race and religion, and the role of religion in celebrity culture.”
Jim Coleman
Department: Biology; Dr. Coleman is also the new UNCG provost
Research areas: Plant physiological ecology; plant and ecosystem responses to environmental change; ecological and evolutionary physiology of heat shock proteins; plant-herbivore interactions
Interesting fact: “I taught myself to play the piano. Also, last year I was part of group of three that resuscitated an individual who had a heart attack in a university administrative meeting, helping to get that person breathing until the paramedics arrived- all is now well.”
Story by Elizabeth Keri, College of Arts & Sciences
