This week UConn welcomes more than 80 new faculty members, continuing a three-year hiring trend that has invigorated the University with a large number of highly qualified academics from diverse backgrounds.

"We have attracted a strong cadre of new professors who will help the University accelerate toward reaching its goal of becoming one of the top public universities in the country," says Fred Maryanski, interim chancellor.

"These faculty will contribute significantly to the enhancement of our research and instructional productivity and they will be excellent role models and mentors and teachers for the outstanding students who are coming to the University at this time," he says.

"As a comprehensive land-grant institution," Maryanski says, "we have the tripartite mission of scholarship, teaching and outreach. All of these individually are important, but what makes our mission so special is that these are integrated and we bring our research and expertise to the classroom to enhance the learning opportunities for students."

This is the third year in a row that the University has hired a substantial number of new professors, replacing as much as one-fifth of the faculty in the wake of two waves of early retirements.

Maryanski says most of the positions created by retirements have now been filled, however, and the University is unlikely to hire as large a number of faculty next year.

Still, he says, the temporary hold on hiring caused by the current budget deficit probably will have no significant impact on faculty hiring for next academic year.

Maryanski says the size of the group indicates that the University is competing successfully in the national - and international - marketplace. "When it comes to getting the quality of applicants we're looking for, the market is very competitive," he says. "All the top universities are vying for the very best people."

He says incoming faculty members have been drawn by the strength of the existing faculty and opportunities to work with excellent colleagues, and by UConn 2000, which has enriched the physical environment, both in the overall appearance of the campus and the particular facilities faculty will use.

"This is an outstanding group both individually and collectively," Maryanski says. "They will have a major impact on our growth in the next several years and we all look forward to working with them."

Elizabeth Omara-Otunnu

New Faculty:

Tariq Abdulaziz, asst. prof., educational psychology; Ph.D. Penn State University; specialty: special education.

Andrei Alexandrescu, asst. prof., molecular & cell biology; Ph.D. Univ. of Wisconsin 1989, Project Leader, University of Basel, Switzerland; specialty: high-resolution solution NMR investigations of protein structure, folding, dynamics and association; conserved physical properties of OB-fold proteins; HIV regulatory/accessory proteins.

Mark Aindow, assoc. prof., metallurgy & materials engineering; Ph.D. Univ. of Liverpool, England; senior lecturer, University of Birmingham, England; specialty: transmission electron microscopy, materials characterization.

Jose-Manuel Alonso, asst. prof., psychology; M.D. Univ. de Santiago de Compostela, Ph.D. Univ. Autonoma de Madrid; postdoctoral fellow, Rockefeller Univ.; specialty: brain processing of visual information.

Emmanouil Anagnostou, asst. prof., civil engineering; Ph.D. Univ. of Iowa; specialty: hydrologic analysis.

Brian Aneskievich, pharmaceutical sciences; Ph.D. SUNY-Stony Brook; specialty: epithelial cell differentiation and regulation of gene expression by nuclear receptor transcription factors.

Alexandra Bell, visiting asst. prof., educational leadership; Ph.D. Univ. of Conn.; specialty: adult and vocational education.

Karen Berasi, lecturer, communication sciences; M.A. Ohio Univ.; specialty: speech and language pathology.

Melissa Bray, asst prof., educational psychology; Ph.D. Univ. of Conn.; specialty: interventions to promote academic and social functioning in light of communications and behavioral disorders.

Daniel Caner, asst. prof., history and modern & classical languages; Ph.D. Univ. of California-Berkeley; specialty: social & cultural history of the late antique world (ca. 200-600 B.C.), evolution of church institutions.

Douglas Casa, asst. prof., sports, leisure & exercise sciences; Ph.D. Univ. of Conn.; specialty: exercise in heat, heat illnesses, thermal physiology.

Robert Chiang, visiting asst. prof., operations and industrial management; Ph.D. Univ. of Washington; specialty: management information systems.

Wilson Chiu, asst. prof., mechanical engineering; Ph.D. Rutgers Univ.; specialty: thermal sciences, processing of advanced materials.

James Chrobak, asst. prof., psychology; Ph.D. Univ. of North Carolina, adjunct assistant professor, Univ. of California-Davis; specialty: neurobiology of learning and memory, synaptic plasticity, oscillatory properties of septo-hippocampal-entorhinal circuitry.

Patricia Clifford, instructor in residence, management; MBA, Univ. of California-Los Angeles; specialty: strategy.

Richard Cole, asst. prof., political science; Ph.D. Univ. of Conn.; specialty: judiciary, lower court compliance with supreme court decision making.

Anne D'Alleva, asst. prof., art & art history/women's studies; Ph.D. Columbia Univ.; specialty: gender and the visual arts in 18th- and 19th-century Tahiti.

Arthur Engler, asst. prof., nursing; D.N.Sc. Catholic University of America-Washington, D.C.; specialty: how families and staff care for children in intensive care units; psychological and biological effects of kangaroo care (a therapy for preterm infants) on parents.

Signithia Fordham, assoc. prof., anthropology; Ph.D. Univ. of Maryland; specialty: education and urban anthropology, influence of race and gender categories and identities on education practices and outcomes among African-American adolescents.

Alex Gitterman, prof., social work; Ph.D. Columbia Univ.; specialty: social work practice and education.

Bernard Gioffinet, asst. prof., ecology & evolutionary biology; Ph.D. Univ. of Alberta; specialty; bryophyte systematics, evolutionary trends & relationships within the mosses, systematics of lichenized fungi.

Bernard Grela, asst. prof., communications sciences; Ph.D. Purdue University (pending); specialty: child language development, grammatical morphology in children with specific language impairment and phonological development disorders.

Changfeng Gui, assoc. prof., mathematics; Ph.D. University of Minnesota, assoc. prof. Univ. of British Columbia; specialty: solving of partial differential equations in applied fields, nonlinear equations and systems of equations modeling phase transition, superconductivity and biologic pattern formation.

Julie Hagelin, asst. prof., ecology & evolutionary biology, Ph.D. Univ. of New Mexico; specialty: bird breeding behavior, olfaction, and feather microstructure of diving birds.

Richard Hurley, assoc. prof., accounting; Ph.D. Univ of Conn.; specialty: impact of federal tax incentives on corporate and industrial planning, use of statistic process controls in management accounting.

Elizabeth Jokusch, asst. prof., ecology & evolutionary biology; Ph.D. Univ. of California-Berkeley, postdoctoral research Univ. of Tucson; specialty: phenotypic evolution, especially the role of development, in both insects and salamanders.

Blair Johnson, prof., psychology; Ph.D. Purdue University, assoc. prof., Syracuse University; specialty: social influence (attitudes and stereotypes, the prevention of HIV-infection), statistics (meta-analysis), history and philosophy of science.

Douglas Kaufman, asst. prof., curriculum and instruction; Ph.D. Univ. of New Hampshire; specialty: literacy and language arts instruction, influence of affect and teacher/student relationships on literacy learning.

Amy Kenefick, asst. prof., nursing; Ph.D. Univ. of Massachusetts; specialty: identification and management of pain among cognitively impaired elderly persons, nursing homes, suffering.

Mansour Keramat, asst. prof., electrical & systems engineering; Ph.D. Univ. of Paris-Sud; specialty: data converters, computer-aided statistical design of integrated circuit, circuit quality estimation & optimization algorithms.

Peter Kingstone, asst. prof., political science; Ph.D. Univ. of California; asst. prof. Univ. of Vermont; specialty: Latin American politics, politics of economic reform, political behavior of industrialists in response to economic reform.

James Kiwanuka-Tondo, visiting asst. prof., communication sciences, Ph.D. Univ. of Connecticut; specialty: health communication campaigns.

Shang-Kuang Kung, assoc. prof. in residence, operations & information management; Ph.D. Univ. of Connecticut; specialty: management information systems.

Brenda Kruz, assoc. prof., school of social work; Ph.D. Univ. of North Carolina; specialty: mental health casework.

Bruce Larson, asst. prof., agriculture & resource economics; Ph.D. Univ. of Wisconsin; specialty: agricultural economics.

Tracey Laszoffy, asst. prof., school of family studies; Ph.D. Syracuse University; specialty: adolescent violence, family therapy with oppressed populations.

Ana LeGrand, asst. prof. in residence, plant science; Ph.D. Univ. of Maryland; specialty: integrated pest management.

Vedran Lelas, asst. prof., operations & industrial management; Ph.D. Univ. of Texas-Austin; specialty: management information systems.

Senjie Lin, asst. prof., marine sciences; Ph.D. SUNY-Stony Brook, research asst. professor, SUNY-Stony Brook; specialty: biological oceanography, phytoplankton ecology and physiology.

Richard London, director of actuarial science, mathematics; Ph.D. Northeastern Univ.; specialty: actuarial science.

Allison Mackay, asst. prof., civil and environmental engineering; Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology; specialty: environmental engineering.

Seth Macinko, asst. prof., geography, Avery Point campus; Ph.D. Univ. of California-Berkeley; resource economist, Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game, Commercial Fisheries Division;specialty: marine management, economics with relation to commercial fisheries.

Patrick Mather, asst. prof., chemical engineering; Ph.D. Univ. of California; specialty: optical theology of liquid crystalline polymers and polymer blends, inorganic-organic hybrid polymers, actuation mechanisms in polyelectrolyte hydrogels, high-performance thermosets.

John Mathieu, prof., management; Ph.D. Old Dominion University; specialty: industrial organizational psychology.

Jean McGivney-Burelle, asst. prof., curriculum and instruction; Ph.D. Univ. of Conn; specialty: mathematical problem solving.

Marian Mollin, visiting asst. prof., history, Torrington campus; Ph.D. Univ. of Massachusetts; specialty: gender and political activism in the American radical pacifist movement, 1940s-1970s.

Kankana Mukherjee, visiting asst. prof., economics; Ph.D. Univ. of Conn.; specialty: production analysis and banking.

Mary Murphy, asst. prof., physical therapy; Ph.D. Texan Woman's Univ.; specialty: intervention studies & fall prevention for elderly, based on non-linear causal resource analysis.

Jalro Nunes, visiting lecturer, linguistics; Ph.D. Univ. of Maryland; specialty: linguistics.

Ugo Nwokejii, asst. prof., history; Ph.D. Univ. of Toronto; specialty: Atlantic slave trade.

Ann O'Connell, asst. prof., educational psychology, Ed.D.; Teachers College, Columbia University; specialty: statistical methodology, statistics education, program evaluation for HIV/AIDS prevention.

Michael O'Neill, asst. prof., molecular & cell biology; Ph.D. Univ. of Texas; postdoctoral fellow, Princeton Univ.; specialty: molecular genetics of vertebrate development, molecular mechanisms and evolution of genomic imprinting, genetics of imprinting and behavior.

Rachel Waugh O'Neill, asst. prof., molecular & cell biology; Ph.D. La Trobe; research associate, Center for Theoretical & Applied Genetics, Rutgers Univ.; specialty: genetics of speciation, mammalian chromosome evolution, genome evolution and remodeling, transposable elements and retroelements, hybridogenesis and clonal inheritance in vertebrates, epigenetics.

Saul Ostrow, assoc. prof., art and art history; master's degree Univ. of Massachusetts; specialty: modern and contemporary art, 1955-1974, social and technological issues affecting critical thought and practice.

Usha Palaniswamy, asst. prof., Asian American studies/allied health; Ph.D. Univ. of Conn.; specialty: Asian American health issues, medicinal plants of Asian origin, health benefits of plant foods.

Ian Papautsky, asst. prof., electrical & systems engineering; Ph.D. Univ. of Utah; specialty: bio-engineering.

Crystal Park, asst. prof., psychology; Ph.D. Univ. of Delaware; specialty: stress and coping, religiosity, health psychology.

Cheryl Parks, asst. prof., social work; Ph.D. Bryn Mawr College, Pa.; specialty: gay and lesbian issues, alcohol use and abuse, clinical treatment, social work education.

Trinh Pham, asst. prof., pharmacy; Pharm.D., Univ. of Oklahoma; specialty: oncology.

John Phillips, asst. prof., accounting; Ph.D. Univ. of Iowa; specialty: taxation, corporate tax planning, role of incentives.

Diane Quinn, asst. prof., psychology; Ph.D. Univ. of Michigan; specialty: stigma and self, ideology and its effects on the judgement of self and others, stereotypes and achievement, mental health and well being.

Pat Rafferty, asst. prof., pharmacy; Ph. D. Medical Univ. of South Carolina; specialty: ambulatory care, cardiovascular risk reduction, diabetes.

Prabashni Reddy, asst. prof., pharmacy; Pharm.D. Albany College of Pharmacy; specialty: pharmoeconomics and outcomes.

Kristina Rettman, asst prof, pharmacy; Ph. D. Northeastern Univ.; specialty: ambulatory call clinical practice.

Xae Alicia Reyes, assoc. prof., curriculum & instruction/Puerto Rican and Latino studies; Ph.D. Univ. of Colorado-Boulder; specialty: migration and schooling, teacher education, school reform, school improvement teams, site-based management, college partnerships for mentoring populations at risk.

Frederick Roden, asst. prof., English; Ph.D. Univ. of New York; specialty: Victorian literature and culture, religious studies, queer theory/gay studies and gender studies, medievalism, place of religion and religious history in emergence of homosexual identities in the nineteenth century.

Alexander Russell, asst. prof., computer science & engineering; Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology; specialty: computational complexity and algorithms, randomness in computation, cryptography and security, quantum computation, distributed computation, combinatronics, graph theory and harmonic analysis.

Sajay Samuel, asst. prof., accounting; Ph.D. Penn. State Univ., specialty: managerial accounting, managerial and operation information.

Samuel L. Schrager, asst. prof., marketing; J.D. Univ. of Miami; specialty: law.

Yael Sharvit, asst. prof., linguistics; Ph.D. Rutgers; visiting assistant professor, Univ. of Mass.; specialty: natural language semantics, syntax /semantics interface and Semitic linguistics.

Nancy Shoemaker, asst. prof., history; Ph. D. Univ. of Minnesota; specialty: American Indian history, cultural and social history, east of the Mississippi, 17th-20th centuries.

Del Siegle, asst. prof. in residence, educational psychology; Ph.D. Univ. of Connecticut; specialty: self-efficacy, student motivation, gifted and talented students.

Young Woo Sohn, asst. prof., psychology; Ph.D. Univ. of Illinois; specialty: industrial/organizational psychology expertise and skill acquisition, human performance computational modeling of cognition.

Gregory Sottile, instructor in residence, marketing; MPA, Univ. of Conn.; specialty: marketing.

John Stiver, asst. prof., economics; Ph.D. Univ. of Rochester (pending); specialty: macroeconomica/international finance, the effects of monetary policy and its relationship with capital accumulation.

Edward Taylor, asst. prof., mathematics; Ph.D. SUNY-Stony Brook; visiting asst. prof., University of Michigan; specialty: low-dimensional hyperbolic manifolds.

Phillip Tomporowski, asst. prof. in residence, sport, leisure & exercise sciences; Ph.D Univ. of Mississippi; specialty: exercise psychology, attentional processes involved in skilled human performance.

Barbara Tortora, lecturer/academic clinical coordinator of education, physical therapy; master's degree Univ. of Conn.

Richard Tubbs, assoc. prof., accounting; Ph.D. Univ. of Florida; specialty: making of auditors.

Barrett Wells, asst. prof., physics; Ph.D. Stanford Univ.; specialty: condensed matter.

Steven Wilf, assoc. prof., law; Ph.D. Yale Univ.; specialty: 18th-century legal history, intellectual property law.