6 Sept. 29, 2014 columns.uga.edu
Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost
UGA welcomes new faculty
Below is a list of new tenured and tenure-track faculty who have joined the university since the previous list was published in Columns a year ago. This information was provided by the Office of Faculty Affairs, which acts as a liaison between the university and the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia on matters related to faculty appointment, promotion and tenure. College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
Koushik Adhikari, assistant professor, food science and technology; Amrit Bart, professor and assistant dean, animal and dairy science; Gaelen R Burke, assistant professor, entomology; Dario Chavez Velasquez, assistant professor, horticulture; Xiangyu Deng, assistant professor, food science and technology; Kristopher Elliott, assistant professor, agricultural leadership, education and communication; Lohitash Karumbaiah, assistant professor, animal and dairy science; Craig Landry, associate professor, agricultural Lohitash and applied Karumbaiah economics; Walter Scott Monfort, associate professor, crop and soil sciences; Suzanne O’Connell, assistant professor, horticulture; Wesley Porter, assistant professor, crop and soil sciences; Eric D. Rubenstrein, assistant professor, agricultural leadership, education and communication; Travis Smith, assistant professor, agricultural and applied economics; and Sha Tao, assistant professor, animal and dairy science.
Franklin College of Arts and Sciences
Edward Paul Asmus, professor, music; Thomas Biggs, assistant professor, classics; Suzanne Birch, assistant professor, anthropology and geography; Jianfu Chen, assistant professor, genetics and biochemistry and molecular biology; Paola C. De Santo, assistant professor, Romance languages; Eric Matthew Ferreira, associate
professor, chemistry, Emily Frey, assistant professor, music; Christopher P. Garvin, professor and director, art; Noah Giansiracusa, assistant professor, mathematics; Forest Isbell, assistant professor, plant biology; Kevin Jones, assistant professor, history; Christian Klimczak, assistant professor, geology; Justin Lavner, assistant professor, psychology; Kyu Hyung Lee, assistant professor, computer science; Ping Ma, associate professor, statistics; Akos Magyar, professor, mathematics; Peter A. O’Connell, assistant professor, classics and communication studies; Margaret Renwick, assistant professor, Romance languages; Leslie Gordon Simons, professor, sociology; Ronald L. Simons, professor, sociology; Philip Adrian Smith, William and Pamela Prokasy Professor of Arts, music; Julie Dangremond Stanton, assistant professor, cellular biology; Tamara Sonia Thomas, assistant professor, dance; Cynthia J. Turner, professor and director of bands, music; Yuanfei Wang, assistant professor, comparative literature; Frans Weiser, assistant professor, comparative literature; Izola Wilson, John O. E i d s o n Distinguished Professor of American LitHang Yin erature, English; and Hang Yin, assistant professor, biochemistry.
Terry College of Business
James Conklin, assistant professor, insurance, legal studies and real estate; Zhongjin Lu, assistant professor, finance; Robert Resutek, assistant professor, accounting; Joshua T. White, assistant professor, finance; and
Laura Zimmermann, assistant professor, economics and international affairs.
Odum School of Ecology
Craig W. Osenberg, professor; and Seth Jonathan Wenger, assistant professor.
College of Education
Janet Buckworth, professor and department head, kinesiology; Jarrod A. Call, assistant professor, kinesiology; Ashley Harrison, assistant professor, Janet Buckworth e d u c a t i o n a l psychology; H. George McMahon, assistant professor, counseling and human development services; Darris Means, assistant professor, counseling and human development services; Karl Maxim Newell, professor and associate dean, kinesiology; and Trena M. Paulus, professor, lifelong education, administration and policy.
College of Engineering
Robert Davis, assistant professor; Eric Freeman, assistant professor; Karen M. Hallow, assistant professor, engineering and epidemiology and biostatistics; Lawrence Hornak, professor and associate dean; and Ramana Pidaparti, professor.
College of Environment and Design
Brian Cook, assistant professor; and Clark Scott Nesbit, assistant professor.
College of Family and Consumer Sciences
Leann Birch, Bill and June Flatt Professor, foods and nutrition;
Heidi Ewen, assistant professor, financial planning, housing and consumer economics and health promotion and behavior; Sergiy Minko, Georgia Power Professor of Fiber and Polymer Science, textiles, merchandising and interiors and chemistry; Desiree Michele Seponski, assistant professor, human development and family science; and Emilie Phillips Smith, Janette McGarity Barber Distinguished Professor and department head, human development and family science.
Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources
Bertram Bynum Boley, assistant professor; Bronson Bullock, associate professor; and Puneet Dwivedi, assistant professor.
Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication
Yan Jin, associate professor, advertising and public relations; Maria Elizabeth Len-Rios, associate professor, advertising and public relations; Ivanka Pjesivac, assistant professor, journalism; and Pamela S. Whitten, professor and provost, telecommunications, health policy and management and communication studies.
College of Pharmacy
Ewan K. Cobran, assistant professor, clinical and administrative pharmacy; Russell J. Mumper, professor and vice provost, pharmaceutical and biomedical sciences and engineerEwan Cobran ing; Scott D. Pegan, associate professor,
pharmaceutical and biomedical sciences; and Elisabeth Lilian Pia Sattler, assistant professor, clinical and administraElizabeth Sattler tive pharmacy and foods and nutrition.
School of Public and International Affairs
Lihi Ben Shitrit, assistant professor, international affairs; Temirlan Moldogaziev, assistant professor, public administration and policy; and Bradley Wright, professor and department head, public administration and policy.
College of Public Health
Grace Bagwell Adams, assistant professor, health policy and management; Tamora A. Callands, assistant professor, health promotion and behavior; and Janani R. Thapa, assistant professor, health policy and management.
School of Social Work
Rebecca A. Matthew, assistant professor.
College of Veterinary Medicine
Matthew Boegehold, professor, physiology and pharmacology and GRU/UGA Medical Partnership; Maria Ferrer, associate professor, large animal medicine; Samuel Patrick Franklin, assistant professor, small animal medicine and surgery; Brian James Jordan, assistant professor, population health and poultry science; Koichi Nagata, assistant professor, veterinary biosciences and diagnostic imaging; Jesse Schank, assistant professor, physiology and pharmacology.
AWARDS from page 1 committed to excellence in teaching,” said UGA President Jere W. Morehead. “Taken together, these Regents’ Teaching Awards reveal the exceptional academic environment that defines the classrooms and laboratories across UGA’s campus. I am proud of the excellent work performed by Drs. Finlay and Lemons and the many individuals involved in the success of our First-Year Odyssey Seminar program.” The board of regents, which oversees the state’s 31 public colleges and universities, created its Faculty/ Department Awards program in 1996 and expanded it in 2000 to acknowledge professors’ records of superlative teaching and strong commitment to student learning. The Regents’ Teaching Excellence Award and the Regents’ Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Award are the highest honors bestowed on faculty at Georgia’s public colleges and universities. “Our faculty are the cornerstone of the world-class learning environment that the University of Georgia
provides, and I am delighted that Drs. Finlay, Lemons and the many faculty who help make the FirstYear Odyssey Seminar program a success have been recognized for their outstanding work,” said Pamela Whitten, senior vice president for academic affairs and provost. Finlay has received numerous accolades for his work. He has been awarded many of UGA’s highest honors for faculty, including the Sandy Beaver Award and the Lothar Tresp Outstanding Professor Award. Finlay also has been named a Senior Teaching Fellow by the Center for Teaching and Learning; a Research Fellow by the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts; and a Wye Faculty Fellow by the Aspen Institute. Finlay, who joined UGA’s faculty in 1988 and served as department head from 2002 to 2014, teaches an Honors class in Introductory Sociology and a class on Sociology of Work, as well as a globalization course that is taught through study abroad. Most recently, he developed and currently co-directs the Stellenbosch study
Andrew Davis Tucker
From left: Assistant professor and UGA Extension poultry scientist Brian Kiepper, talks with Sarah Jane Thomsen, Sydney Ray and Lauren Balcar as they dissect chicken in the First-Year Odyssey class “Chicken Que: Science Behind the Grill.”
abroad program, which takes students to South Africa for intensive four-week service-learning projects. Lemons is recognized nationally as a leader in science education. Selected as a National Academy of Sciences Education Fellow in the Life Sciences in 2010-2011, she has
twice received UGA Innovative Instruction Faculty Grants and has used the funding to transform teaching methods in her department and to refine an online problem-solving tutorial for students called SOLVEIT. Lemons’ research has garnered more than $1 million in grant
funding from federal and state agencies. Since joining UGA’s faculty in 2009,she has taught large-scale introductory courses to hundreds of students per year, including her current course in Introductory Biochemistry. She also teaches the graduate level course Teaching Biological Science and has mentored undergraduates, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in biology education research. Just three years after its introduction, UGA’s First-Year Odyssey Seminar program has reached more than 17,000 students. Intended to provide students in their first year of college an opportunity to experience the wealth of options at a large, landgrant university, the program allows students and professors to explore hundreds of topics in small 15- to 18-person classes. Through the university’s Center for Teaching and Learning, professors have received support and training on seminar instruction, including a focus on active learning, fostering discussion and engagement and implementing written assignments.