Brown faculty will grow by more than three dozen this fall

The most recent hires will bring greater diversity and leadership at three interdisciplinary centers.

by Mark Nickel

The 2004-05 academic year will bring continued change to the Brown faculty, improving diversity, increasing the size of the faculty, and supporting the University's initiatives in new multidisciplinary centers.

As of May 27, according to preliminary information from the Office of the Dean of the Faculty, 40 candidates had accepted faculty appointments at Brown (including two who will join in January 2005), with 19 more offers still under consideration. Eighteen of those new faculty fill newly created positions, part of the University's plan to expand the faculty by more than 20 percent during the next five to eight years.

"It is immensely satisfying to see how much momentum is building behind Brown's plans for faculty enhancement," said Mary L. Fennell, dean of the faculty. "Departments and centers across all the major disciplines will feel the impact of these new hires and additional positions. Brown's investment in its faculty is vital to the success of the Plan for Academic Enrichment."

In addition to increasing the size of the faculty, this year's hiring process will bring a number of other changes:

Greater diversity: The 2004-05 cohort of new faculty members represents a greater level of diversity than past years. African American scholars alone account for nearly 20 percent of the new hires so far, joining faculty in computer science, molecular pharmacology, English, American civilization and Africana studies.

"The hiring process itself has remained pretty much the same," said Eric Suuberg, associate dean of the faculty. "What was different this year is that we have a director of institutional diversity who works with departments at an early stage, helping to develop hiring plans and to recruit candidate pools that are broader and richer. The searches begin from a stronger position." Brenda Allen, associate provost and director of institutional diversity, began her work at Brown last July.

Interdisciplinary centers. Three of the University's emerging interdisciplinary centers will receive leadership from incoming faculty members. Charles (Chip) Lawrence will direct the Center for Computational Molecular Biology. Steven Lubar, professor of American civilization, will serve as director of the John Nicholas Brown Center for the Study of American Civilization and will provide leadership for new efforts in public humanities. John Logan, professor of sociology, will help establish the University's new Initiative in Spatial Structures in the Social Sciences.

Areas of note. The Economics Department will welcome four new faculty members. History will have three. Five new faculty will have appointments in the life sciences, with more than a dozen other offers pending. "The timetables for hiring vary quite a bit among the disciplines," Suuberg said. "Hiring in the life sciences typically concludes later in the cycle, so more of the offers are pending."

Open-rank and broad-area searches. Many faculty searches - nearly 20 this year - are now undertaken without restrictions as to rank. Other searches try to identify candidates by using as broad a range of scholarly expertise as possible. "The open-rank and broad-area searches often give departments greater flexibility and a wider range of choices," Suuberg said.

The hiring process for 2004-05 faculty will continue into June. As of May 21, the Dean of the Faculty's roster of new members included:

Humanities

• Katherine Bergeron, professor of music (with tenure), comes to Brown from the University of California-Berkeley.
  
• Timothy Bewes, assistant professor of English, has held visiting professorships in England and the United States and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Pembroke Center.
  
• Mark Cladis, professor of religious studies (with tenure), comes from Vassar College, where he was chair of religious studies.
  
• Arlene Keizer, associate professor of English and American civilization (with tenure), is an associate professor at the University of Michigan.
  
• Youenn Kervennic, lecturer in French
  
• Rolland Murray, assistant professor of English, is an assistant professor at the Ohio State University.
  
• Joseph (Butch) Rovan, associate professor of music, comes to Brown from the University of North Texas.
  
• Nidia Schumacher, lecturer in Hispanic studies
  
• Zachary Sng, assistant professor of German studies, earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from Brown and recently earned his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University.
  
• Silvia Sobral, lecturer in Hispanic studies
  
• Herve Vanel, assistant professor of the history of art
  
• John Wideman, professor of Africana studies and English, came to Brown from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where he was Distinguished Professor of English.
  
• Patricia Ybarra, assistant professor of theater, speech and dance, earned a Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities in theater history and criticism and has been a director, dramaturg and theater administrator in New York.
  

Social Sciences

• James Green, assistant professor of history, is associate professor of history at California State University-Long Beach and a specialist on modern Brazil and Latin America.
  
• Stephen Houston, professor of anthropology, is the Jesse Knight University Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Brigham Young University.
  
• Ulrich Krotz, assistant professor of political science, comes to Brown from the faculty of international politics at Oxford University.
  
• John Logan, professor of sociology (with tenure), has been director of the Lewis Mumford Center for Comparative Urban and Regional Research at the University of Albany.
  
• Steven Lubar, professor of American civilization and director of the John Nicholas Brown Center for the Study of American Civilization, has been chair of the Division of History of Technology and Curator of Engineering and Industry at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History.
  
• Pauline Jones Luong, associate professor of political science (with tenure), is a specialist in post-Soviet Central Asia, where her command of Russian, Turkish and Uzbeck allows her to do extended field work.
  
• Sophocles Mavroeidis, assistant professor of economics, received his Ph.D. at Oxford University and has just completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Amsterdam.
  
• Lily Xiaoli Qiu, assistant professor of economics, has just completed her Ph.D. at Yale University.
  
• Seth Rockman, assistant professor of history, is an assistant professor at Occidental College.
  
• Robert Self, assistant professor of history, comes to Brown from the history department of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
  
• Naoko Shibsawa, assistant professor of history, has been an assistant professor of history at the University of Hawaii-Manoa.
  
• Sergio Turner, assistant professor of economics, has just completed his Ph.D. at Yale University, where he was a three-time winner of the Cowles Foundation Prize.
  
• Ivo Welch, professor of economics (with tenure), is a professor at the Yale University School of Management.
  

Physical Sciences

• Martin Dindos, assistant professor of mathematics, will begin a three-year term appointment as a Tamarkin Professor.
  
• David Dumas, assistant professor of mathematics, will begin a three-year term appointment as a Tamarkin Professor.
  
• Odest Chadwicke (Chad) Jenkins, assistant professor of computer science, earned his Ph.D. in 2003 at the University of Southern California, where he is a postdoctoral research associate.
  
• Claire Kenyon, professor of computer science (with tenure), earned her doctorate at the Universite de Paris XI and became a junior member of the Institut Universitaire de France in 2002.
  
• Yeuh Ko, assistant professor of mathematics, will begin a three-year term appointment as a Tamarkin Professor.
  
• Charles (Chip) Lawrence, professor of applied mathematics (with tenure), will direct the new Center for Computational Molecular Biology.
  
• Govind Menon, assistant professor of applied mathematics
  
• Vaughn Minasian, assistant professor of mathematics, will begin a three-year term appointment as a Tamarkin Professor.
  
• Meinolf Sellmann, assistant professor of computer science, earned his graduate and undergraduate degrees at the University of Paderborn in Germany and has been serving as a postdoctoral research associate at Cornell University.
  

Life Sciences

• Wayne Bowen, professor of Molecular Pharmacology and Biotechnology, is chief of the unit on receptor biochemistry and pharmacology at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIH).
  
• Yoav Gilad, assistant professor or biology
  
• Thomas Griffiths, assistant professor of cognitive and linguistic science, will receive his Ph.D. in psychology this year from Stanford. He is currently working at MIT.
  
• Gerwald Jogl, assistant professor of microbiology, cell biology and biochemistry, has just completed four years of postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia University.
  
• Mark A. Johnson, assistant professor of microbiology, cell biology and biochemistry, has just completed a four-year postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Chicago.