体育买球官网 University has welcomed several new faculty members in theSchool of the Arts, School of Humanities, School of Natural & Social Sciencesand theSigmund Weis School of Business.

School of the Arts

Karly Etz, assistant professor of art history, holds a master’s degree and doctorate in art history from Pennsylvania State University. At 体育买球官网, she teaches courses ranging from global surveys of art history to upper-level classes on contemporary art theory. Etz’s research examines the cultural significance of skin and body art within contemporary artistic practice, and she has shared her expertise on the history of tattooing and human remains collections on public broadcasting and The New York Times.

Jen Rock, assistant professor of lighting & design, has worked on hundreds of productions and events across the country. Her teaching career includes training Bachelor of Fine Arts students at Western Michigan University, and most recently serving on the faculty at Albright College. Rock earned her bachelor’s degree from 体育买球官网 in 2001 and went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts in theatrical lighting design from the University of Connecticut.

School of Humanities

Lauren Emick, assistant professor of education, holds a doctorate in curriculum and instruction from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She is a passionate practitioner who has worked in public education for the past 19 years as an elementary educator, and has served as a National Writing Project fellow and consultant. Her research interests include students with adverse childhood experience, elementary poetry pedagogy, elementary writing instruction and nature-based learning. Emick holds a master’s degree in higher education from Geneva College.

Amira Hanafi, associate professor of digital publishing & editing, is an experimental writer and digital storyteller who earned their Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Hanafi is the author of the book Forgery and several other works of digital literature, including an award-winning documentation of language change in the aftermath of the 2011 Egyptian revolution. They have taught writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Columbia College Chicago and most recently as a writer-in-residence at Coastal Carolina University. Hanafi’s interest in the materiality of language permeates her creative work, which often explores themes of migration, belonging and plurality of identity.

Ana Vergara Sierra, assistant professor of Latin American history, earned her doctorate in history from the University of Minnesota and holds two master’s degrees in the history of the Americas from Universidad Carólica Andrés Belo (Venezuela) and Universitat Jaume (Spain). Her research examines slavery in the later decades of the Spanish Empire and its transformation during the formation of the Venezuelan nation-state. She also explores the themes of exile, belonging and forced migration across trans-imperial borders during the Age of Revolutions, with particular attention to the shifting experiences of displacement across imperial, Atlantic and internal contexts.

School of Natural & Social Sciences

Michael Mauro, assistant professor of biology, earned his doctorate from Yale University and comes to 体育买球官网 from Columbia University Irving Medical Center, where he was a postdoctoral research scientist. His research focuses on how the events occurring during the first cell divisions impact the rest of an organism’s development using the nematode worm C. elegans. Mauro has previous teaching experience in a variety of lecture and lab courses at Sacred Heart and Fairfield universities.

Sigmund Weis School of Business

Rifat Sharmelly, assistant professor of strategic management, began her career in the telecommunication industry with a multinational mobile operator. She earned her doctorate from the University of New South Wales, Australia, before entering academia and previously taught at Quinnipiac University and Washington College. Sharmelly conducts industry-based empirical research in strategic innovation management, social business, artificial intelligence ethics, technology entrepreneurship and strategic sensemaking, and has published her work in several journals.