College Welcomes New Faculty in the Arts, Humanities and Sciences

Eighteen new faculty members are teaching at the college this fall on subjects ranging from astronomy to Islamic art to neuroscience.

With 283 full-time faculty on the roster, Smith has a student to faculty ratio of 9:1.  New faculty members are listed below by their respective departments:

Astronomy

Anne Jaskot, Five College astronomy education and research postdoctoral fellow and lecturer, earned a Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor in July. Her research interests include galaxy evolution and the interstellar medium in starburst galaxies.

Biological Sciences

Lisa Mangiamele, assistant professor, earned her Ph.D. in biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2010. She holds a B.A. in neuroscience from Colgate University and worked as a research assistant at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. Her laboratory focuses on neural mechanisms underlying flexibility in social decision-making in frogs and fish.

Marney Pratt, laboratory instructor, earned her Ph.D. in biology from Duke University in 2003. She has taught at Mount Holyoke College, Springfield Technical Community College and the University of New England. Her research covers the ecological role of invasive species in the Gulf of Maine.

Chemistry

Andrew Berke, assistant professor, earned a Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2012. He holds two undergraduate degrees: a B.S. from Grand Valley State University and a B.A. from Calvin College. His teaching interests include general and physical chemistry, atmospheric chemistry and the chemistry of art objects.

East Asian Languages and Literatures (Japanese)

Haeng-ja Chung, visiting assistant professor, earned her Ph.D. in socio-cultural anthropology from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2004. She has taught at the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University, Colorado College and Hamilton College.

Environmental Science and Policy

Camille Washington-Ottombre, assistant professor, earned a Ph.D. in forestry and natural resources management from Purdue University in 2010. She has taught at Oberlin College and worked on research projects in rural Kenya and Zambia. Her laboratory will engage students in work on adaptation to climate change.

Government

Bozena Welborne, assistant professor, earned a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2011. She was an assistant professor at the University of Nevada, Reno and is also a contributing scholar to the Women and Human Rights in the Middle East Program at Rice University. Her research focuses on social change in the Middle East and North Africa.

Islamic Art

Alex Seggerman, Five College Mellon postdoctoral fellow, received her Ph.D. in the history of art from Yale University this summer. She was awarded a John F. Enders Fellowship from Yale and an ECA Pre-Doctoral Fellowship at the American Research Center in Egypt.

Landscape Studies

Steven Moga, assistant professor, earned his Ph.D. in urban studies and planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2010. He was an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow at the New York Historical Society. Moga’s research interests include community development and urban design politics. He is also a photographer.

Mathematics and Statistics

Benjamin Baumer, visiting assistant professor, earned his Ph.D. in mathematics from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 2012. He was a statistical analyst for the New York Mets from 2004 to 2012 and recently co-authored a book with Smith Professor Andrew Zimbalist on analytics in baseball, The Sabermetric Revolution.

Joshua Bowman, visiting assistant professor, earned his Ph.D. in mathematics from Cornell University in 2009. He has taught at Cornell and with the Peace Corps and was a lecturer at Stony Brook University.

Daniel Cuzzocreo, visiting assistant professor, earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Boston University in May. He has taught at Boston University and Tufts University. His research interests include dynamical systems and complex dynamics.

Joel Louwsma, visiting assistant professor, earned his Ph.D. in mathematics in 2011 from the California Institute of Technology, where he also received an excellence in teaching award. He previously taught at the University of Oklahoma.

Valerie L. Nazzaro, visiting assistant professor, received her Ph.D. in statistics from the University of Connecticut Storrs in May. She held a postdoctoral research position at the university’s Center for Health, Intervention and Prevention.

Gwen Spencer, assistant professor, received her Ph.D. in operations research from Cornell University in 2012. She holds a bachelor of science from Harvey Mudd College and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Neukom Institute at Dartmouth College. She is working on a computational project on ecosystem migration driven by climate change.

Middle Eastern Studies, Five Colleges Arabic Language Initiative

John Weinert, lecturer, earned a master’s in Arabic studies from the University of Texas (UT) at Austin in 2012. He has taught at the University of New Haven, the U.S. Naval Academy and the Arabic Flagship Program at UT.

Philosophy

Samuel Ruhmkorff, visiting assistant professor, earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor in 2001. He has taught at Smith and the University of Missouri and is currently an associate professor at Bard College at Simon’s Rock.

Psychology

Alexandra Michaela Burgess ’08, postdoctoral fellow and lecturer, received a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa in July. She majored in psychology at Smith and has taught at Mānoa and Westchester Jewish Community Services.