乐播传媒 has welcomed a large group of new faculty this year. Seventeen tenured or tenure-track professors joined the college during the 2025-2026 academic year. 乐播传媒 News has been introducing them in groups over this semester. This fifth and final installment introduces you to the last of our new faculty hires at 乐播传媒 this year. 

Wesley Gillis, assistant professor of physics

Focus of teaching and scholarship:

Collaboration is at the heart of both my teaching and my scholarship. In the classroom, I am focused on implementing team-based learning across the physics curriculum. This approach helps students build effective team dynamics, develop collaborative problem-solving skills, and engage deeply with complex, real-world problems through shared inquiry and discussion.

My research similarly centers on collaborative engagement within a large, international scientific community. As a member of the nEXO collaboration 鈥� comprising approximately 200 scientists worldwide 鈥� I contribute to the research and development of a next-generation, underground experiment designed to investigate the fundamental nature of the neutrino. Specifically, my lab studies the detection mechanisms, hardware design, and data analysis of vacuum ultraviolet light in liquid xenon. Together, our work aims to answer one of physics鈥� most profound questions: Is the neutrino its own antiparticle?

What is most exciting in your first year at 乐播传媒? 

I was excited to play Dvorak鈥檚 9th symphony, the New World Symphony, with the 乐播传媒 College Orchestra in November.

What is your favorite part of teaching?

When a class full of teams has been given a challenging problem, the volume ramps from a dull rumble to a clamorous cacophony of engagement. This is when I know good learning is happening.

Eugene Choo, professor of economics

Focus of teaching and scholarship:

I specialize in empirical industrial organization and econometrics, with a research focus on marriage matching and the economics of household formation. My work combines structural modeling and econometric identification to study matching markets. Before joining 乐播传媒 College, I taught econometrics, industrial organization, mathematical economics, and intermediate microeconomics. 

What is most exciting in your first year at 乐播传媒? 

I am excited about joining the vibrant liberal arts community and engaging with 乐播传媒 students. I am also looking forward to exploring the beautiful state of Maine.

What is your favorite part of teaching?

My favorite part of teaching is watching students discover economics and how it is used to look at everyday life.

Charlotte Connop, assistant professor of earth and climate sciences

Focus of teaching and scholarship:

I’m a metamorphic petrologist and geochronologist. These are fancy words to say that I date the formation of (usually pretty old) metamorphic rocks and try to figure out how these rocks formed. These rocks can help us figure out the driving mechanisms behind processes that happen deep within the Earth that we are unable to directly observe. I’m especially interested in investigating processes that lead to the movement of elements within the Earth, including things like partial melting 鈥� where temperatures increase enough to melt rock, with the molten rock able to migrate through the Earth, leading to the transportation of material to a new location.

My teaching focuses reflect these research interests 鈥� in my classes, students learn about the rocks that make up our planet and the land we live on, and the different processes that formed and modified these rocks over time. Students learn how elements join together on the atomic scale to make minerals and how those minerals are combined in different proportions to produce different rocks. We focus on connecting these different rocks to tectonic environments to disentangle Earth processes that we are unable to observe ourselves. 

What is most exciting in your first year at 乐播传媒? 

I’m most excited about getting to know everyone in the 乐播传媒 community! Whether it’s students in class, swinging by office hours or completing a senior thesis with me, or seeing my fellow faculty and staff around campus or in the Den grabbing lunch, everyone has been so welcoming so far. I’m looking forward to getting to know everyone more and becoming part of the 乐播传媒 community.

What is your favorite part of teaching?

My favorite part of teaching is watching students pull together information from across the semester (and across their courses) to grapple with complex scientific questions. We think about a lot of different time and length scales in earth and climate sciences and to have students be able to think from the nano scale to the macro scale and beyond requires integrating a lot of different concepts, which can be hard to grapple with at times, but so rewarding when put together correctly. 

乐播传媒 is welcoming a large group of new faculty this year. Seventeen tenured or tenure-track professors will join the college over the course of the 2025-2026 academic year.聽乐播传媒 News聽is introducing them in groups over this semester.聽Part 1 ran in our newsletter聽of September 25, part 2聽went out in our October 3聽newsletter and Part 3 appeared in our October 10 newsletter.

Scotty Farley, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry

Focus of teaching and scholarship:

My background is in chemical biology: developing and using chemical tools to help solve intractable problems in biology, specifically, for me, virology. Viruses are obligate intracellular parasites and need to get all of their resources from the cells they infect (ours) and often manipulate the way our cells work in order to do that. One of the things that has been very historically difficult to study has been the way that viruses manipulate the lipid composition of cellular membranes. My research uses common cold coronaviruses 鈥� related to the familiar SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19, but much less pathogenic 鈥� to investigate how the coronavirus family as a whole manipulates the lipid metabolism of infected cells and what aspects of that are essential to the viral life cycle. I teach a range of classes in the chemistry department, including organic chemistry, biochemistry, and biochemistry of virus replication.

What are you most looking forward to in the coming year at 乐播传媒?

I taught here as a visiting professor last year and had a great time in the classroom and getting to know 乐播传媒 students. This year, in addition to teaching in the classroom, I am thrilled to get to mentor thesis students in my lab. I鈥檓 excited to share my research with my students and try to convince them that lipids are as cool as I think they are.

What is your favorite part of teaching?

I teach a lot of classes that have a reputation of being hard and scary and unapproachable 鈥� organic chemistry, especially. A lot of the students are often worried that they鈥檙e not smart enough or are not cut out to understand these 鈥渉ard鈥� topics. I love being able to frame things to make them approachable: to make it obvious how understanding such abstract ideas as where electrons like to be are directly relevant to things that they care about, like how antibiotics work. I equally love making an environment where everyone gets the tools they need to understand what鈥檚 going on. The moments when someone who has been struggling or has been reticent about speaking up begins to participate in class discussions are when I feel like I鈥檝e succeeded as a teacher.

Halla Attallah, assistant professor of religious studies

Focus of teaching and scholarship:

My focus is in Qur’anic and early Islamic studies. I am also interested in teaching classes on the scriptural traditions, religion and feminist studies, and disability studies and religion. My scholarship examines the stories of the Qur’an within the context of gender and disability studies. Currently, my work examines the Qur’an’s annunciation stories 鈥� the stories of the miraculous birth of a son to Abraham, Sarah, the virgin Mary, and Zachariah. Relying on these texts, I consider how the Qur’an and its original seventh century audience imagined the embodied experiences associated with reproduction and infertility.

What are you most looking forward to in the coming year at 乐播传媒? 

I am most looking forward to getting to know students and colleagues.

What is your favorite part of teaching?

My favorite part of teaching is when you see the “aha moments” happening from a reading or concept being discussed in class. This can show up in student questions, comments, facial expressions, and even struggles with the materials showing that there is always so much more to learn.

Lauren Buisker, assistant professor of rhetoric, film, and screen studies and director of debate

Focus of teaching and scholarship:

I teach rhetoric classes that examine how discourse distributes power and explore how activists use rhetoric to create a safer, more inclusive society. I鈥檓 currently teaching 鈥淧ublic Discourse鈥� and I鈥檓 excited to teach 鈥淚ntroduction to Argumentation鈥� and 鈥淪ocial Advocacy and Activism鈥� in the winter. Similar to my teaching, my research investigates how activists against sexual violence use rhetoric to challenge harmful narratives surrounding victimhood and aim to create a world in which marginalized people can live free of violence. 

What are you most looking forward to in the coming year at 乐播传媒? 

I鈥檓 very excited about three things: 1) office hours, because I enjoy talking one-on-one with students about how they can make connections between their specific interests and general course content; 2) traveling around the globe 鈥� Oxford, United Kingdom, and Sofia, Bulgaria, this year with the Brooks Quimby Debate Council as the new director of debate; and 3) lunches in Commons because I love the sense of vibrant community that emerges in a space where people really seem to know one another and care about each other. The soft serve ice cream in Commons is also incredible! 

What is your favorite part of teaching?

I love course sessions when I feel like I learn just as much from my students as they learn from me. I enjoy creating classroom environments that are active, noisy (in the best possible way), and engaging. In these moments of chaotic rigor, it’s an absolute privilege to witness students come to understand a concept so effectively that their contributions expand and energize my own intellectual curiosities.

乐播传媒 is welcoming a large group of new faculty this year. Seventeen tenured or tenure-track professors will join the college over the course of the 2025-2026 academic year. 乐播传媒 News is introducing them in groups over this semester. Part 1 ran in our newsletter of September 25 and part 2 went out in our October 3 newsletter.

Ellen Finch, assistant professor of psychology

Focus of teaching and scholarship:

I am a clinical psychologist whose research explores the intersection of personality and psychopathology. Most recently, I have been working to elucidate underlying features of pathological narcissism. In the classroom, I enjoy teaching any and all topics related to clinical psychology, from research to theory to applied psychotherapy. My experience as a practicing mental health clinician deeply informs both my scholarship and pedagogy.

What are you most looking forward to in the coming year at 乐播传媒?

I am particularly excited to get to know the 乐播传媒 community. Between the students, staff, and faculty, it is clear there are many very special people on this campus. I鈥檓 eager to learn more about the folks who make 乐播传媒 what it is, and to become a fully engaged part of this community myself. I am also really looking forward to exploring Maine with my family 鈥� we鈥檙e thrilled to be in a place with so much natural beauty and are ready to break out our snowshoes!

What is your favorite part of teaching?

Without a doubt, my favorite part of teaching is helping students develop self-efficacy both in the classroom and beyond. It鈥檚 extremely rewarding to witness this form of academic and personal growth, which can pop up where I least expect it! This is one of the reasons I am so grateful to be at a liberal arts institution 鈥� we as faculty have the privilege to really get to know our students and see their development over multiple years. 

Christine Martinez, assistant professor of environmental studies

Focus of teaching and scholarship:

My family and friends are often confused when I tell them that I teach in an environmental studies program. They remember me as a photojournalist, and later, as a scholar of Spanish literature and film. But I tell them it鈥檚 all connected! I鈥檝e always been interested in the stories people tell to make sense of and change the world. Because of Spain鈥檚 experience as both center (of colonial empire) and periphery (of modern Europe), it is a fascinating place to study the power dynamics of contemporary environmental discourses. And, because of its relatively late incorporation into post-WWII global capitalism (thanks to a 36-year dictatorship), we see consumer culture鈥檚 aggressive arrival alongside the survival of older, subsistence ways of working the land. I currently study how small farmers, migrant workers, community gardeners, and rural feminist movements in Iberia are recuperating subsistence practices and building transnational alliances to advocate for more just food and land-use systems. (It鈥檚 a longer story to explain how I, a daughter of the Puerto Rican diaspora, ended up studying Spain鈥�) At 乐播传媒, I teach courses on food justice and food sovereignty; Mediterranean and Caribbean environmental thought; visual media studies; and journalistic communication in environmental studies. 

What are you most looking forward to in the coming year at 乐播传媒?

Prior to my current appointment, I was a visiting professor here at 乐播传媒 for two years. While I am grateful for this time and everything I learned, I am relieved to be off the job market and excited to finally be 鈥渏ust me,鈥� to plan courses I can teach and improve for years to come, to contribute to the environmental studies curriculum and humanities at 乐播传媒, to accompany students throughout their college careers, and to build on community partnerships with organizations that do meaningful, necessary, and inspiring work in this place called Maine. I am also very much looking forward to completing a draft of my first book project this academic year! 

What is your favorite part of teaching?

I have never liked being the center of attention or standing at the front of an audience speaking! What I like the most about teaching is decentering the classroom and sharing meaningful learning experiences with students: seeing students get excited about ideas or making connections between material; accompanying students through the highs and lows of research or creative processes 鈥� and finally reaching that aha! moment where the effort pays off; serving as a bridge between students and spaces where impactful community work is happening (and encountering them semesters later working in these spaces). I also deeply enjoy running into my students semesters later 鈥� whether after study abroad, summer internships, or graduation 鈥� and learning about the work they are doing beyond 乐播传媒.

Kamal Kariem, assistant professor of anthropology

Focus of teaching and scholarship:

I am an environmental and political anthropologist, whose research and teaching interests center on global indigeneities and comparative imperial formations as these intersect with nature protection. These interests come together in my book project, Believing Conservation: Hunting, Protecting Nature, and Altering Indigeneity on the Bikin River, in which I demonstrate how the environment becomes a site of contestation over state belonging among the Udege people through conflicting mobilizations of late imperial Russian and Soviet histories. Within this project, the questions I ask revolve around the social formation of indigeneity within Russia. In particular, I leverage archival data on understudied histories from late imperial Russia and the Soviet Union to demonstrate how late imperial officials and Soviet bureaucrats constructed indigeneity and found uses for indigeneity as a social formation. Each historical deep dive was fueled by ethnographic research from 2019鈥�2021 in Russia鈥檚 Primorskii krai as I learned how these pasts become socially relevant today (and for the future) within one Udege community as its members conflictingly relate to both the role of hunting as a part of protecting nature and the formation of Bikin National Park.

What are you most looking forward to in the coming year at 乐播传媒?

I鈥檓 really looking forward to teaching ANTH 101 鈥淐ultural Anthropology鈥� and my seminar ANTH 237 鈥淚ndigeneity Today.鈥�  For ANTH 101, it鈥檚 always exciting to teach students who are new or newer to the discipline and its central concepts. I鈥檝e found many students know more about anthropology and think more ethnographically than they believe, so part of the work is demonstrating this and discovering ways to further develop this knowledge and type of thinking. Somewhat differently, I love teaching 鈥淚ndigeneity Today鈥� because it emerges from my own research. As I conducted research, I found convergences and divergences between the experiences of Indigenous peoples in the U.S. and Russia, which encouraged me to read more Indigenous scholars and engage with Native and Indigenous studies in more robust ways. I genuinely enjoy sharing this process of 鈥渢hinking between鈥� with students and teaching how they can do similar thinking within their own work and how they should always engage with Indigenous scholars and community members. Further, for the portfolio project (the class鈥� main assignment), students always impress me with the quality of their thinking and questioning and the necessary care they use as we read and learn about Indigenous communities and experiences. Together, I get to expose students to a wide range of ideas both connected to discipline broadly (as well as critique of it) and to my own research, which fuels my own research questions and process! 

What is your favorite part of teaching?

My favorite part of teaching is thinking with students. Teaching, learning, and research are always collaborative processes. Within my own undergraduate studies, having faculty who understood this left a lasting mark on my teaching practice. I love engaging with the questions that most interest students and answering them together if possible. And if we can鈥檛 come up with an answer, we do the work of identifying questions that would need to be answered first. Another aspect of thinking with students that I also deeply enjoy is finding ways of showing students how they can use anthropology and its ideas in their own lives and future work. 乐播传媒 students seem especially interested in applying what they are learning, which makes such connections incredibly important and satisfying. With this in mind, in my teaching, I make a case for how they can develop their own ethnographic sensibilities and why this can be useful beyond the classroom.聽

乐播传媒 is welcoming a large group of new faculty this year. Seventeen tenured or tenure-track professors will join the college in the course of the 2025-2026 academic year. 乐播传媒 News is introducing them in groups over this semester.聽聽Last week’s installment was the first.

Sarah Conley, assistant professor of physics and astronomy

Focus of teaching and scholarship:

My research is on energy transport in the Sun-Earth system. In particular, I run high-performance computer simulations to study the exchange of energy between particles and electromagnetic fields in what’s called the solar wind: a very low-density, yet constant and dynamic flow of particles that come from the Sun and spread through the solar system.

Big-picture questions in this field include, “Why is the solar corona so much hotter than the surface of the Sun?”, “What causes particles in the solar wind to heat up?”, and “How does space weather 鈥� which is created by energetic events on the Sun like solar flares, or coronal mass ejections 鈥� impact the Earth?” I am excited to explore topics including the Sun, space weather, and space plasma physics in future classes

What are you most looking forward to in the coming year at 乐播传媒?

Getting to know the campus community, and attending concerts and performances at 乐播传媒.

What is your favorite part of teaching?

Watching students become confident in their understanding of topics that are new or challenging, and playing a role in facilitating that process.

Emma Ianni, assistant professor of classical and medieval studies

Focus of teaching and scholarship:

I am a scholar of ancient Greek literature and history. My research focuses on the relationship between tragedy and historiography in classical Athens, with an emphasis on the intersection of gender, democracy, and war. My interests also include reception and public humanities. In both my teaching and research, I explore the (dis)continuities between antiquity and modernity in order to propose inclusive and original engagements with the ancient world.

What are you most looking forward to in the coming year at 乐播传媒?

Seeing how becoming part of the 乐播传媒 community will allow me to take my teaching and scholarship in new, creative, and interdisciplinary directions. I admire the intellectual synergy and spirit of collaboration I’ve seen around me during the past few weeks, and I am excited to be part of such an environment.

What is your favorite part of teaching?

I love seeing students engage with new materials in their own personalized ways  鈥� when they are able to connect the class to their own interests and passions, they bring a contagious enthusiasm to the classroom. I teach ancient Greek and Latin, and I really enjoy facilitating new connections to such old languages; looking at the classical past through my students’ personal investments has helped me to think about it in original, inclusive, and exciting ways.

Cigole Thomas, assistant professor of mathematics

Focus of teaching and scholarship:

My research lies in a field of mathematics called algebraic geometry, where we use algebra to explore and understand geometric shapes. These shapes, known as varieties, are formed by points where a group of equations are all equal to zero simultaneously. I am especially interested in how numbers “move” when an action is applied to mix them. I study the patterns that emerge, called orbits. My research is motivated by the way different branches of mathematics come together, combining their tools to solve questions that would otherwise be difficult to address. 

Another aspect of my work involves exploring ways to improve how mathematics is taught and to better understand how students learn mathematical concepts. I look forward to sharing what I find beautiful in mathematics through teaching. 

What are you most looking forward to in the coming year at 乐播传媒?

Getting to know my students and colleagues and the journeys they have traveled. I look forward to being a small part of their journeys, if only for a while, hopefully to help make their journey at 乐播传媒 a little brighter, a little deeper, and all the more worthwhile.

What is your favorite part of teaching?

What I cherish most in teaching are the quiet transformations, those moments when something learned in class begins to ripple beyond the limits of a single semester. Sometimes you can see it in a moment of understanding, an 鈥渁ha鈥� that lights up a student鈥檚 face 鈥� other times, in a passing remark: 鈥淢ath isn鈥檛 as hard as I thought.鈥� It鈥檚 often these gentle reshapings of a student’s relationship with math that are the most rewarding moments of teaching for me. 

乐播传媒 is welcoming a large group of new faculty this year. Seventeen tenured or tenure-track professors will join the college over the course of the 2025-2026 academic year. 乐播传媒 News will introduce them in groups over this semester.  

Ifrah Shahi, assistant professor of biology

Focus of teaching and scholarship:

I will be teaching microbiology classes, and my research focuses primarily on bacteriology. In particular, my lab will be researching the bacteria Kingella kingae, which causes bone and joint infections in children. I, along with students in my lab, will be investigating how K. kingae responds to and behaves in the presence of factors it might encounter in the human body during the course of infection 鈥� factors such as components of blood and the extracellular matrix. In addition to working on these questions in the lab, students in my 鈥淟ab-Based Biological Inquiry鈥� classes will also start playing around with these ideas as part of their class research projects! 

What are you most looking forward to in the coming year at 乐播传媒?

I’m really looking forward to teaching new classes and new materials, as well as working with students in my lab and getting some fun research done. But more than that, I鈥檓 really excited about being a part of the 乐播传媒 community. Being at 乐播传媒 is a real throwback to my own time as an undergraduate in a small liberal arts New England college (Mount Holyoke College), and I鈥檓 thoroughly exhilarated about the opportunity to be for my students the same kind of a mentor that my undergraduate professors were for me.

What is your favorite part of teaching?

First and foremost, the best part about teaching is getting to meet new students 鈥� I always come out of a semester feeling invigorated by all the amazing student interactions, learning new things, and creating long-lasting connections with the students. Secondly, I always love the active part of teaching: figuring out new ways to teach science that interests, excites, and intrigues students. I am very fond of bacteria, and imparting that affection for microbes and microbial research to students is always a wonderful full-circle moment for me.

Anderson C. Moss-Weaver, assistant professor of religious studies

Focus of teaching and scholarship:

My teaching and scholarship are relatively wide. My research focuses on how 20th-century African American poets and novelists create Black religious worlds that are grounded in the creation of sacred Black collective memory and the mystical sensations and experiences of freedom. I often joke that I am really interested in how Black people imagine what liberation feels like, smells like, tastes, and sounds like. My research is partially interested in African-American uses of East and South Asian religious and philosophical thought for the purposes of thinking through liberation from unique and alternative angles apart from the standard Western canon.

Here at 乐播传媒, I鈥檓 excited to teach courses in African American religious traditions and a course on the concept of 鈥渟piritual but not religious.鈥� I also hope to develop a seminar that helps students think critically about the complex and intertwined history of American evangelicalism and Christian nationalism. Finally, I hope to integrate my passion for TTRPGs (tabletop role-playing games) and fantasy/sci-fi into a class focused on religion, worldbuilding, and speculative fiction. I hope that students can work together to build their own fantasy world while learning how authors, from J.R.R. Tolkien to Octavia Butler, created their literary worlds by drawing on mythology and religions from our own world.

What are you most looking forward to in the coming year at 乐播传媒?

You know, I went to a small liberal arts college when I was in undergrad, and I loved it whenever a professor would come to campus events and lectures; their presence really made the small college environment feel unified. So, I really look forward to doing the same for students here at 乐播传媒 College. In that sense, I鈥檓 excited to contribute to the unique intellectual and creative reciprocity between faculty, students, and staff that can be cultivated in a small college setting.

What is your favorite part of teaching?

Learning is a transformational experience; I really mean that! But that experience we call learning, genuine learning, is challenging to provoke, and I think the best way to do it is to think alongside my students. Where are they coming from? What are they bringing to the table? Excellent pedagogy requires a dedication to understanding your students’ interests, strengths, and areas where they need improvement.

When I know my students well enough, I can ask them a question in a way that I know will push them specifically to think outside their comfort zone or really boost their confidence. By getting to know my students 鈥攖hat is, by thinking and teaching alongside them 鈥� I can see those moments of learning. They’re striking. Moments that I might call epiphanic, or someone else might call a 鈥渆ureka!鈥� moment, or what most often creates the 鈥渙h wow!鈥� expression in the classroom. So, my favorite part of teaching, really, is learning.

Robin B. McDowell, assistant professor of environmental studies

Focus of teaching and scholarship:

My teaching and scholarship live at the intersections of several fields (environmental history, Black studies, and art and design) that, taken together, animate the dynamic space of environmental studies. My work explores historical dimensions of environmental racism and environmental justice for Black communities in south Louisiana, inspired by years of community organizing and work as a walking tour guide in New Orleans鈥� French Quarter. My source base is vast 鈥� archives, oral histories, earth sciences, graphic design, and multimedia art 鈥� and I try to share as much of that material as possible in my classes.This semester, I鈥檓 teaching 鈥淟ives in Place: Introduction to Environmental Humanities鈥� and 鈥淔ree The Land: Histories of Environmental Racism in the United States.鈥� We鈥檙e doing a ton of multimodal learning grounded in iterative design thinking. I can鈥檛 wait to develop new courses that convene in critical and creative studio models and collaborate with units across the college to not only talk about but practice interdisciplinary teaching.

What are you most looking forward to in the coming year at 乐播传媒?

To be honest 鈥� office hours! Since I did not come from a liberal arts undergraduate background, I am continually awestruck and invigorated by a campus culture in which professors and students form such rich relationships and really go on the college journey together. In just the first three weeks of teaching, I鈥檝e discovered that I have sailors, knitters, dancers, bird call enthusiasts, photographers, and watercolor artists in class. I am excited to learn more about the full range of activities that inspire my students.

What is your favorite part of teaching?

I love when students start to 鈥渢rust the process,鈥� engage with a method, activity, or concept that seems intimidating at first, and then completely surprise themselves! We all have ideas about our place in the world, our strengths and challenges, and the contributions we鈥檇 like to make to the world. But often, even for young people, how we approach these ideas may be shaped by a more siloed understanding of learning 鈥� and teaching!

By exposing students to a vast array of methods in an inviting classroom environment, I start to hear things like, 鈥淚 never thought of myself as a creative person, but collaging just unlocked ideas I never considered while reading the text!鈥� Whether it’s discovering a writer, thinker, or maker whose work shifts their perspectives on events in their own lives, or working on a project that unlocks a perspective they never knew they could express, students remind me to never stop approaching the world with wonder and openness.