Callas and Phifer-Rixey Named Faculty Fellows

Assistant Professor Kimberly Callas Assistant Professor Megan Phifer-Rixey

Assistant Professor Kimberly Callas and Assistant Professor Megan Phifer-Rixey were named by the Provost’s Office as the University’s inaugural group of Faculty Fellows. Callas will serve as the UCI artist-in-residence and Phifer-Rixey as its marine genetics faculty fellow during the two-year fellowship.

The Faculty Fellows program was established in 2019 as part of the Centers of Distinction Academic Enhancement Strategic Plan. Faculty members were invited to develop proposals to partner with the University’s Centers of Distinction to pursue a project with a significant scholarly, artistic, pedagogical, business or policy outcome that connects the academic department with the Center. Through her residency with the UCI, Callas, of the Department of Art and Design, will immerse herself in the scientific research taking place in coastal environments at Monmouth University and share it with communities through art. She plans to host Discovering the Ecological Self workshops, develop her own artwork and organize a symposium with the UCI that features research on sustainability topics being conducted by University faculty.

Dr. Phifer-Rixey, a member of the Biology Department, is applying her work in evolutionary and population genetics to marine and coastal environments. She plans to create opportunities for students to engage in authentic

genetic research and expanding Monmouth’s work with marine environmental DNA (eDNA).

“I’m already working on eDNA projects and I think we have a bit of a gap here in that we have the capacity to collect and filter the samples, but we haven’t had the capacity to do the genetic benchwork and handle the data,” she said. “There’s a real opportunity for me to help build that capacity here at Monmouth.”