Feature
August 26, 2009
Eleven New Faculty Members at Saint Mary's College for 2009-10 Academic Year
Saint Mary's College welcomes 11 new faculty members as classes get under way on Aug. 31.
Monica D. Fitzgerald is a new assistant professor in the
Liberal & Civic Studies Program. Monica received her doctorate in U.S. history at the
University of California, Davis, with an emphasis in early American history and a minor
in cross-cultural women’s studies. She is currently working on her manuscript,
Drunkards and Fornicators on Meetinghouse Hill: Gender, Religion & Identity in Early New
England. Before arriving at SMC, Monica was an adjunct professor around the Bay Area,
including at the University of the Pacific, Cal State, East Bay, UC Davis and SMC. She
enjoys tennis, kayaking, reading and spending time with her family.
Rebecca Jabbour is joining the faculty of the Biology
Department, where she will teach courses in anatomy and evolutionary biology. She was
most recently a postdoctoral scholar at UC Berkeley's Human Evolution Research Center.
Her interests include human evolution, African ape diversity and skeletal biology and
variation. Her research has taken her to museums across the U.S. and Europe, and she has
spent four field seasons looking for fossils and stone tools in the Afar Rift Valley of
Ethiopia. She also has a special interest in science outreach; while at UC Berkeley, she
worked on a human evolution exhibit and hosted science cafes. Her doctorate from City
University of New York is in biological anthropology. Her husband, Gary Richards, is also
a biological anthropologist, and they frequently collaborate on research projects. They
also like to explore Berkeley's restaurants, feed birds and squirrels on their porch, and
watch nature documentaries.
Wares Karim joins the faculty in graduate business, accounting.
He is the son of a school teacher father and a housewife mother, and was born in
Bangladesh, where he had his undergraduate education. He began his career as a lecturer
at Dhaka University nearly 20 years ago. While at Dhaka University, he received a
commonwealth scholarship to pursue higher education in the United Kingdom. After
completing his doctorate from the University of Leeds, U.K., he returned to serve Dhaka
University, where he worked for more than two more years until he received an offer to
join Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. He worked at Victoria for nearly
11 years before joining Brunel University in the U.K. last year. From Brunel, he joined
Saint Mary’s earlier this year. He has published more than 20 articles in peer-reviewed
journals, including Research in Accounting Regulation, Corporate Governance: An
International Review, Asia Pacific Journal of Accounting and Economics and International
Journal of Accounting.
Weiwei Pan is joining the Math Department as an assistant
professor. She completed an undergraduate degree in mathematics at Mary Baldwin College,
a small liberal arts women's college in Virginia. Her doctorate is from Wesleyan
University and concerns applications of higher categories in representation theory and
algebraic topology. Although her graduate degree is in mathematics, she is also
interested in computer science, especially in areas where it intersects with mathematics
and biology. In the past, she has had the pleasure of teaching a variety of undergraduate
classes, from standard math courses to a course in Chinese history. Aside from traditional
teaching, she looks forward to working with students in undergraduate research and in
community building through the use of recreational mathematics.
Aaron Sachs is assistant professor of media, technologies and
culture in the Department of Communication. He completed his doctorate in communication
studies from the University of Iowa, where he was a graduate instructor and recipient of
the Seashore-Ballard Dissertation Fellowship. Aaron's academic work focuses on the
intersection of media and culture with a particular interest in issues of power as it
functions through identity categories like race, gender, sexuality and class. This
concern was reflected in his dissertation, entitled "The Hip-Hopsploitation Film Cycle:
Representing, Articulating and Appropriating Hip-Hop Culture," which examined the
shifting articulation of hip-hop in the media during the 1980s and the social, cultural
and political consequences of this shift. Aaron is also an intermedia artist and author
of both fiction and narrative nonfiction. He currently serves on the board of directors
for COLAGE, a national movement of children, youth and adults with a lesbian, gay,
bisexual, transgender and/or queer (LGBTQ) parent. As a board member, Aaron helps COLAGE
build community and work toward social justice through youth empowerment, leadership
development, education and advocacy, something he is equally interested in bringing to
his work as a member of the Saint Mary's community.
Arnav Sheth is a new faculty member in graduate business. He got
his doctorate in quantitative finance in 2007 working with mathematician Larry Shepp.
Prior to his position at Saint Mary’s, he was a lecturer with the Economics Department
at the University of California, Berkeley and an economist with Deloitte Tax. His
research interests include behavioral finance, financial math and the tactical
application of mathematical and statistical tools to improve efficiencies in business. He
has published in the area of subjective discounting and his work has been presented at
several conferences around the U.S. and Europe. He also has an MBA in finance, and a
master’s in economics from Rutgers University. Outside of his work, he has made four
expeditions to the Himalayas and his current pastime is marathon running (New York in
2005, San Francisco in 2007).
Elena Songster joins the History Department from the
University of Oklahoma, where she taught Asian history since 2004. During the 2009-10
academic year, she will be a Kiriyama Research Fellow in residence at the University of
San Francisco Center for the Pacific Rim. Her present book project is PANDA NATION:
Nature, Science, and Nationalism in the People’s Republic of China, which examines the
parallel histories of nature protection and the emergence of the giant panda as a
national icon. Her next major research project examines the historical relationship
between traditional medicine and nature in modern China. She completed her doctorate in
history at the University of California, San Diego, and her bachelor’s in history and
Asian studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
Alice Stevens is joining the Department of Mathematics and
Computer Science and will be the coordinator of the Mathematics Readiness Program. Alice
holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics from UC Berkeley, and recently completed her
doctorate in mathematics from UC Davis. Her research is in low-dimensional topology, in
particular, three-dimensional manifolds and knot theory. In her dissertation, Stevens
studied embeddings of knots in Heegaard surfaces of 3-manifolds. In her free time, she
enjoys running, growing tomatoes and zucchini, and learning to cook.
Michael Wagner is the Chevron Assistant Professor of Operations
Management and teaches in the graduate business programs. He holds a B.S. in mathematics,
B.S. and master’s degrees in electrical engineering and computer science and a
doctorate in operations research, all from MIT. He designs robust strategies for decision
making under uncertainty, with provable performance guarantees, in application domains
such as routing, scheduling, inventory and supply chain management and financial
derivative pricing. Michael also applies his research in practice, as a consultant to
businesses and organizations. He was previously an assistant professor of management at
CSU, East Bay.
Andrew E. Wilson joins the faculty as an assistant professor of
marketing in graduate programs in the School of Economics and Business Administration.
Wilson completed his doctoral studies at the Schulich School of Business at York
University in Toronto, Canada. His dissertation research focuses on how consumers’
justice beliefs affect the way they form trust judgments of marketing agents, such as
retail salespeople. Prior to his doctoral studies, Wilson spent 16 years in industry.
Most recently, he spent six years as a sales manager at Oracle Corporation. Wilson also
holds an MBA from the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University.
Joseph Zepeda is a new assistant professor in the Integral
Program. He comes to Saint Mary’s from the University of Notre Dame, where he has just
completed his doctorate in history and philosophy of science. His research is on the
intersection of philosophy and natural science in the 17th and 18th centuries. Zepeda has
a history of involvement with Great Books programs; he attended Thomas Aquinas College as
an undergraduate and taught as a graduate instructor in Notre Dame’s Program of Liberal
Studies. He enjoys making music (classical piano and voice), playing basketball and most
of all spending time with his wife, Julie, and their three young children.
