Columbian College will welcome 24 new permanent full-time faculty this fall, adding expertise to disciplines across the sciences, social sciences and humanities. This brings the total number of full-time faculty at CCAS to 491. (The figure does not include full-time visiting or research faculty.)
Domonic Bearfield, Trachtenberg School of Public Policy & Public Administration, holds a PhD in public administration from Rutgers University-Newark, where he was also an associate professor and associate dean of student and academic services. His research areas include local government management, public management, leadership and public sector patronage. His work has appeared in the Public Administration Review, Review of Public Personnel Administration and other leading academic journals.
Tiffany M. Bisbey, Department of Organizational Sciences & Communications, will be awarded her PhD from Rice University this summer in industrial and organizational psychology. Her research interests include teamwork, training and development, safety and workplace resilience.
Emily Bock, Department of American Studies, holds a PhD in anthropology from the University of Chicago, where Bock also was a postdoctoral teaching fellow in the social sciences. Bock’s research and training interests include Black, gender and sexuality studies, queer theory, performance studies, anthropology of the everyday, poetics and aesthetics, critical social theory and post-colonial studies.
Olivia Bullock, Department of Organizational Sciences & Communications, earned a PhD in communication from the Ohio State University. Prior to coming to GW, she worked in strategic communications, public relations and advertising, providing account services to emerging start-ups, Fortune 500 companies and the federal government. She is focused on message design, information processing and persuasion, particularly in health, science and political contexts.
Marc Choi, Graphic Design Program, holds an MFA in graphic design from the Rhode Island School of Design and a BFA in graphic design from James Madison University. Formerly, he was a senior designer on the experience design team at the Art Institute of Chicago. He works across multiple disciplines including digital design, product marketing, brand identity, print media and exhibition design. As an independent graphic designer and art director, some of his clients include the American Folk Art Museum, Condé Nast, J. Crew and Bobbi Brown Cosmetics.
Andrea Cook, Department of Chemistry, holds a PhD in chemistry from Georgetown University and a BS in nutritional science from Brigham Young University. She comes to GW from Trinity Washington University, where she taught and developed the organic chemistry curriculum.
Kent Douglas Crawford, Interior Architecture Program, earned his undergraduate degree in architecture and environmental design from North Carolina State University. He also holds a post-professional Master of Architecture from the University of Florida. Crawford is an award-winning architect whose work focuses on the intersection of design and digital methodologies. In 2018, he started his own architecture practice based in Washington, D.C.
Jeffrey Ding, Department of Political Sciences, holds a PhD in international relations from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes scholar. He was also a current postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. His research focuses on the intersection of technological change and international politics, investigating how technological revolutions influence global relations. His work has been published in Foreign Affairs, Security Studies, The Washington Post and other news outlets.
Heidi Eldridge, Department of Forensic Sciences, holds a PhD in forensic science from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. Before coming to GW, she was a research forensic scientist at RTI International. With more than 20 years of experience in criminal forensic science laboratories, her expertise includes fingerprint identification research, impression/pattern evidence, evidence presentation and the role of human factors and statistical interpretation in forensic science.
Rachel Emas, Trachtenberg School of Public Policy & Public Administration, earned a PhD in public affairs from Florida International University. Before coming to GW, she was an assistant professor and director of the MPA program at the School of Public Affairs & Administration at Rutgers University-Newark. Her research interests include sustainable policy, sustainable development, environmental policy and higher ed pedagogy.
Fallon Goodman, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, earned her PhD in clinical psychology from George Mason University. Prior to coming to GW, she was an assistant professor of psychology at the University of South Florida. Her research interests focus on how people manage social anxiety, foster social connections and develop resilience to adversity.
Lauren Hetrovicz, Department of Romance, German and Slavic Languages and Literature, holds a PhD in Spanish linguistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She was a visiting assistant professor of Spanish Linguistics at the University of Central Florida, and held lecturer positions at Northwestern University and the College of Charleston, South Carolina. Her research interests include second language acquisition, technological tools for language teaching and learning, language-related episodes and second language confidence.
Nabila Hijazi, University Writing Program, received a PhD in English language and literature from the University of Maryland. She also held a postdoctoral fellow position at Loyola University Maryland. Her research interests include translingual writing, refugee women’s literacy practices and Muslim women’s rhetoric(s). Her essay “Reclaiming Forgotten Literacies-Agency through Functional, Rural and Food Literacies” received national recognition as the Honorable Mention in the 2021 Council of Writing Program Administrators, Graduate Research Award for Writing in WPA Studies.
Jessica Jocelyn, Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, will be awarded her PhD from Howard University this summer in communication science and disorders. She is a certified speech-language pathologist with experience evaluating and treating speech-language disorders in schools and child development centers. Her clinical background includes diagnosing and treating phonology, articulation, social communication disorders, fluency and expressive/receptive language.
Gema Kloppe-Santamaría, Department of History, received her PhD in sociology and historical studies from the New School for Social Research. She was a Marie Curie junior fellow at the Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies and an assistant professor of Latin American History at Loyola University Chicago. Her research focuses on crime, violence, gender and religion in 20th- and 21st-century Latin America.
Aasawari Kulkarni, Graphic Design Program, received an MFA in Graphic Design from the Maryland Institute College of Art. She was an assistant professor at the Rhode Island School of Design and has an independent studio practice focused on typography. She was named by Typeone Magazine as “one of the independent type designers to watch out for” in 2021. She works as an independent design consultant for clients such as Penguin Random House, Center for Craft and Ginkgo Bioworks. Her work explores the relationship between human behavior and culture with design.
Nicholas Li, Department of Economics, earned a PhD in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MA in global development economics from Boston University. Before coming to GW, Li was an economist at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He has been published in Econometrica and the Journal of the European Economic Association.
J. Aidan Manubay, Department of Biological Sciences, received his PhD in biological sciences from GW and his BS in biological sciences from the University of Maryland-College Park. Since 2019, he has been a professorial lecturer at GW, teaching courses in biology of nutrition and health, ecology and evolution of organisms and introductory biology. Manubay’s expertise includes social insects, ecology, evolution and natural history.
Warren Milteer, Department of History, holds a PhD in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has held academic appointments as an assistant professor of history at Virginia Tech, the University of South Carolina and, most recently, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. In 2014 and 2016, he received the R.D.W. Connor Awards for best article in the North Carolina Historical Review from the Historical Society of North Carolina. His research interests include U.S. history, the U.S. South, free people of color, race, slavery and Native America.
Andrew Moskowitz, Forensic Psychology Program, received his PhD in psychology from Boston University. Formerly, he was a professor of psychology and program coordinator at Touro College in Berlin, Germany. Moskowitz is a widely published researcher and clinical psychologist, having conducted research into violent and psychotic behavior in relation to trauma and dissociation. His clinical experience includes working with forensic, psychotic and traumatized populations, and he is an editorial reviewer for the European Journal of Trauma and Dissociation and the British Journal of Psychiatry.
Tabitha Razunguzwa, Department of Chemistry, earned a PhD in biophysical chemistry from West Virginia University, where she also held professorial positions for more than 10 years. Since 2019, she has been a visiting assistant professor of chemistry at GW.
Darío Lizancos Robles, Department of Romance, German, and Slavic Languages and Literature, will be awarded his PhD from the University of Georgia this summer in Hispanic linguistics. He is the co-founder and president of Beyond Language Immersion, a nonprofit organization providing language immersion programs in Granada, Spain. His research explores fluency gains made by participants in language immersion experiences outside the United States.
Zimife Umeh, Department of Sociology, received her PhD in sociology from Duke University and was a presidential diversity postdoctoral fellow in the Sociology Department at Brown University. While at Brown, she used an intersectional approach to follow formerly incarcerated women through their pathways to prison, identity development and navigation of institutions during reentry. Her research interests include criminal justice, reentry, gender, race, inequality and education.
Sidney Monroe Williams, Theatre & Dance Program, received an MFA in drama and youth theatre from the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to coming to GW, Williams was an assistant professor in the Theatre Arts Department and African American Theatre Program at the University of Louisville. Williams was also the program director of the university’s Repertory Company. Williams’ artistic work centers on the intersections of race, gender and class to help build more inclusive communities in theatre.