Faculty Tenure and Promotion Announced: Spring 2025

It is with great pleasure that we announce the promotions of 18 faculty members, effective July 1, 2025. 
 
The following faculty were conferred tenure by the Board of Trustees. 

• Katherine Brunson, Associate Professor of Archaeology 
• Khalil Johnson, Associate Professor of African American Studies 
• Meng-ju Renee Sher, Associate Professor of Physics 
• Colin Smith, Associate Professor of Chemistry 
• Sebastian Zimmeck, Associate Professor of Computer Science 

In addition, 13 faculty members are being promoted:  

• Abderrahman Aissa, Associate Professor of the Practice in Arabic 
• Hyejoo Back, Professor of the Practice in East Asian Studies  
• Balraj Balasubrahmaniyan, Adjunct Professor of Music  
• Stephen Collins, Professor of Film Studies  
• Daniella Gandolfo, Professor of Anthropology  
• Elijah Huge, Professor of Art  
• Roy Kilgard, Professor of the Practice in Astronomy  
• Basak Kus, Professor of Government 
• Marc Longenecker, Professor of the Practice in Film Studies 
• Naho Maruta, Professor of the Practice in East Asian Studies  
• Rich Olson, Professor of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry 
• Marcela Oteíza, Professor of Theater
• Joyce Powzyk, Professor of the Practice in Biology   

Brief descriptions of their areas of research and teaching appear below.  
 
Abderrahman Aissa, Associate Professor of the Practice in Arabic 
Professor Aissa is a language teacher whose courses include all levels of Arabic, as well as Cultures and Languages Across the Curriculum (CLAC) courses on introductory Tamazight, Islamic Spain (in Spanish), and Arabic-English translation. He supervises and mentors the Arabic Fulbright foreign language teaching assistants and has been a permanent Fulbright Committee interviewer. He also serves as the faculty coordinator for the Language Collective, contributes greatly to the Fries Center for Global Studies, and regularly participates in language-related events and workshops. His main academic research centers around using the word, concept, image, and phrase association techniques in teaching and learning foreign languages. Professor Aissa is a hyperpolyglot with native or near-native proficiency in Arabic, Tamazight, English, French, and Spanish, an advanced professional level in German, as well as some level of proficiency in nine other languages. 
 
Hyejoo Back, Professor of the Practice in East Asian Studies 
Professor Back is both a teacher and the co-curriculum coordinator for Wesleyan’s Korean program. She has played an important role in the development of the College of East Asian Studies and in the extraordinary growth of the Korean studies program, which has seen course enrollments nearly double since 2013. As the language coordinator for Korean, she organizes cultural events such as lectures and movie nights, and she develops the Korean curriculum. She is co-author of The Pre-Modern History of Korea (Kong and Park Press, 2023) and is currently working on a book on Korean culture for advanced Korean learners. Professor Back teaches elementary, intermediate, and advanced Korean language. 
 
Balraj Balasubrahmaniyan, Adjunct Professor of Music  
Professor Balasubrahmaniyan is a singer, composer, teacher, and scholar of South Indian music. Some of his recent work includes performing at the prestigious annual Cleveland Tyagaraja Aradhana, the largest Indian classical music festival outside India, and Pennsylvania State University, and presenting his scholarship at the Mahatma Gandhi Institute in Mauritius and the University of Trinidad and Tobago, West Indies. In 2015 he was awarded the “Kala Seva Mani” (gem in service of the art) by the Cleveland Tyagaraja Aradhana committee. He offers courses on South Indian music and all levels of South Indian classical vocal performance.   
 
Katherine Brunson, Associate Professor of Archaeology 
Professor Brunson is a zooarchaeologist who studies the long-term environmental and social changes associated with animal domestication in East Asia. Her interdisciplinary research includes excavation of ancient animal bones, collections-based research on bone artifacts, and genomic analyses of ancient animal DNA. Her work has been published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, Human Ecology, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, and Journal of World Prehistory, and she has contributed a chapter to the Oxford Handbook on the History and Practice of Chinese Archaeology.  She teaches archaeology courses focused on world prehistory, East Asia, environmental archaeology, ancient DNA, archaeological method and theory, and zooarchaeology laboratory methods. 
 
Stephen Collins, Professor of Film Studies 
Professor Collins is a prolific and imaginative director, writer, producer, and editor of feature-length and short films, including documentaries, dramas, and comedies. In all of these modes, his work focuses on the inner struggles of his characters, examining the causes of and cures for emotional suffering. His films have been reviewed in The New York Times and screened at many venues, including the Austin Film Festival, Los Angeles Film Festival, Cucalorus Film Festival, and Dances with Films. In 2023 he received The Short Order Award from the Walla Walla Film Festival and the Best Comedy Short award from the Oxford Film Festival. He offers courses on the short screenplay, the artist on film, sight and sound, and Nicholas Ray and Robert Bresson. 
 
Daniella Gandolfo, Professor of Anthropology 
Professor Gandolfo is an urban anthropologist whose research focuses primarily on her native city of Lima, Peru, with a particular interest in sacred manifestations and moments of boundary-breaking in everyday life, including among those who work in poorly regulated sectors of the economy. Her forthcoming book, A Day in “The Hole”: Risk, Loss, and Excess in Downtown Lima (University of Chicago Press), which analyzes a single day in the life of the members of a semi-legal cooperative of vendors in downtown Lima, provides an ethnographic and historical portrait of the market while reflecting on many topics, including sacrifice, bureaucratic rationality, class formation, and the politics of the working poor. She teaches courses on cultural anthropology, ethnography, urban theory, and cultural analysis. 
 
Elijah Huge, Professor of Art 
Professor Huge is an architect whose practice spans commissioned projects, speculative design, and scholarly research. His work has received grant funding from the Architectural League of New York, the Graham Foundation, and the Fulbright Foundation and has been published widely, including in Praxis, Thresholds, Perspecta, Bracket, Architectural Record, Landscape Architecture, Dwell, JAE, and Competitions . At Wesleyan, he is the inaugural director of the College of Design and Engineering Studies and leads North Studio, which serves as a laboratory for design education, research, and fabrication. North Studio’s collaborative work with Wesleyan undergraduates has been exhibited internationally and awarded two national American Institute of Architects (AIA) awards and the Design-Build Award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA). Professor Huge teaches a range of architecture studio courses and advises studio majors undertaking thesis work in architecture. 
 
Khalil Johnson, Associate Professor of African American Studies 
Professor Johnson is the first faculty member appointed in African American Studies to receive tenure. His research focuses on the connected histories of the African diaspora and Indigenous people in North America. His book manuscript, Schooled: An Unsettling History of American Education, under contract with University of North Carolina Press, explores three centuries of the theorizing, formation, and imposition of a particular kind of educational institution for colonized populations in Europe, North America, Africa, and the Pacific. He has published articles in Native American and Indigenous Studies, Journal of American Indian Education, and Pacific Historical Review, and was the 2023–2024 Clements Fellow for the Study of Southwestern America at Southern Methodist University. His courses include Early African American History; Race, Ethnicity, & Popular Music; and Fugitive Perspectives on Education and Civil Society.  
 
Roy Kilgard, Professor of the Practice in Astronomy  
Professor Kilgard is an astrophysicist who teaches and provides integral support for the functioning of the astronomy department, including maintaining the suite of Van Vleck Observatory telescopes and training observers on their use, overseeing the department’s computational infrastructure of computers, software, networking, and data management, and managing the public outreach program. He oversaw the purchase and installation of the 24-inch PlaneWave telescope and worked on converting the existing dome and new telescope into a fully robotic observatory, which significantly increased the efficiency of research observations. Professor Kilgard’s research explores black hole growth and evolution across the mass spectrum, as well as topics related to the history of astronomy at Wesleyan. He offers courses on observational astronomy, the history of astronomy from Copernicus to the Modern Age, and conceptual astronomy. 
 
Basak Kus, Professor of Government 
Professor Kus is a political economist and public policy scholar whose research explores the interplay among the state, capitalism, and democracy, primarily in the United States. Her book, Disembedded: Regulation, Crisis, and Democracy in the Age of Finance (Oxford University Press, 2024), examines the evolving relationship between the state and finance in the US since the early 1970s, providing crucial context for the financial crisis of 2008–10. In 2024, she was the scholar in residence at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, Germany. Her courses include State and Society; Law, Justice, and Democracy; Averting Catastrophe, and Politics: Fundamental Concepts. 
 
Marc Longenecker, Professor of the Practice in Film Studies  
Professor Longenecker’s role in the College of Film and the Moving Image includes teaching, as well as projection, programming, and outreach. He operates, maintains, repairs, and trains others on the use of the department’s state-of-the-art projection booths that handle multiple digital and video formats in all aspect ratios, and assists with over 300 events each year. He oversees the Wesleyan Film Series, which hosts campus screenings four nights a week each semester, and mentors the Student Film Board. He offers courses on Alfred Hitchcock, Elia Kazan’s film and archives, television aesthetics, classic American film comedy, and the films and influences of Martin Scorsese. 
 
Naho Maruta, Professor of the Practice in East Asian Studies  
Professor Maruta serves as both a teacher and the coordinator of Wesleyan’s Japanese language program. As coordinator, she develops the curriculum and facilitates student participation in study abroad programs in Japan. She also represents Wesleyan as a board and executive committee member of the Associated Kyoto Program, attending meetings several times a year to collaborate with program staff and faculty from other consortium institutions on program development. On campus, she organizes annual events such as the Cherry Blossom Viewing Festival and mentors Japanese foreign language teaching assistants. She teaches Japanese language courses at all levels and has recently expanded her educational outreach by teaching Introduction to Japanese Language and Culture I & II to incarcerated students at Cheshire Correctional Institution through Wesleyan’s Center for Prison Education. 
 
Rich Olson, Professor of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry   
Professor Olson is a biophysicist who uses X-ray crystallography to elucidate the structure and function of important proteins, with a particular focus on the ways bacterial virulence factors facilitate host invasion by bacterial pathogens. He has received two R15 grants from the National Institutes of Health totaling over $900,000 and has served on the Advisory Committee, Review and Appeals Board, and as faculty director of the Wesleyan Mathematics and Science Scholars (WesMaSS) program. His research has been published in many journals, including Nature Communications, PLOS Pathogens, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Protein Science. He offers courses on structural biology, membrane protein structure, and signal transduction. 
 
Marcela Oteíza, Professor of Theater
Professor Oteíza is an interdisciplinary artist whose scholarship focuses on scenography and performance design. Her site-based theater work—including In the Presence of Trees—responds to the environments in which it is performed. Her documentary Santiago (en) Vivo, based on street performance objects, has been screened at major venues, including Cineteca Nacional, the Centro Cultural Palacio de La Moneda, in Chile, Concordia University in Montreal, and IFTR (International Federation for Theatre Research) in Belgrade. Her writing appears in Scenography Expanded (Bloomsbury, 2017) and Theatre and Performance Design (Routledge, 2018). She has presented at the Prague Quadrennial (2015, 2019, 2023), most recently in the Latin American curatorial panel at the PQ Symposium. Professor Oteíza teaches design for performance in the Theater Department, the College of Design and Engineering Studies, and the Bailey College of the Environment. 

Joyce Powzyk, Professor of the Practice in Biology 
Professor Powzyk is a biologist who teaches a range of biology courses for non-majors that fulfill the important sciences component of our general education expectations. Her regular courses include Animal Behavior, Primate Behavior, and Biology of Sex. Most recently, she developed an ambitious service-learning course, Science Material for a Malagasy Classroom, held in the MakerSpace and cross-listed with ENVS and IDEAS, in which students develop teaching materials for fifth-grade students in Madagascar. She has served as a mentor to our veteran scholars, advised senior honor theses, served on the advisory board for the Center for the Study of Guns and Society, and has been a jury member for the Friends of the Wesleyan Library Undergraduate Research Prize, as well as the First-Year Seminar Writing Prize. 

Meng-ju Renee Sher, Associate Professor of Physics 
Professor Sher’s research focuses on the development of highly efficient solar cells using materials that are both cost-effective and abundant, and the discovery of lower-cost alternative materials that maintain energy conversion efficiencies. She has pioneered ultra-fast laser techniques that enable terahertz (THz) spectroscopy measurements, allowing her to study solar cell materials at sub-picosecond timescales. Her research has received funding from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, WYLE Laboratories, Inc., and the National Science Foundation. She teaches courses in general physics, quantum mechanics, thermal physics, and experimental and applied optics. 
 
Colin Smith, Associate Professor of Chemistry 
Professor Smith’s research focuses on better understanding how protein structure and dynamics determine activity and ultimately enable rational manipulation for therapeutic or synthetic applications. He has received funding of nearly $1.5 million from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. His research has been published in Protein Science, Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation, Proteins: Structure, Function, and Bioinformatics, ACS Chemical Neuroscience, Journal of Structural Biology, and very recently Science. He teaches courses in general chemistry, physical chemistry for the life sciences, nuclear magnetic resonance, and molecular modeling and design.  
 
Sebastian Zimmeck, Associate Professor of Computer Science 
Professor Zimmeck is a computer scientist with degrees in law whose research on information privacy and security is situated at the interface between computer science and public policy. His work focuses on how personal information is collected, tracked, and shared via information systems, with the ultimate goals of making the Internet more transparent and structurally private, and helping people to exercise their privacy rights online. He co-founded Global Privacy Control, which helps individuals exercise their legal privacy rights, and he leads the privacy-tech-lab at Wesleyan. Professor Zimmeck’s courses include Information Security and Privacy, Software Engineering, How to Talk to Machines, and Advanced Information Security and Privacy.