New faculty bring expertise to ASU

August 11, 2009

Arizona State University is welcoming new tenured and tenure-track faculty to the university this year.<separator></separator>Many faculty members who have been hired are accommodating enrollment growth in popular majors while others are replacing positions that have been vacated because of retirements and resignations. Approximately 50 new scholars have joined the university.<separator></separator>"ASU has focused its efforts to fill needs based on enrollment growth and to move forward in areas of targeted excellence," says Elizabeth D. Capaldi, ASU's executive vice president and provost.<separator></separator>Areas of ASU that are experiencing substantial student growth include criminology, education, business, technology and liberal arts and sciences.Among the new faces at ASU are:<separator></separator>Usha Menon joins the College of Nursing and Health Innovation as the Pamela Kidd Distinguished Research Professor from the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Nursing. Her National Institutes of Health-funded research focuses on the development and testing of tailored interventions to increase cancer screening behavior. A major emphasis of this research has been on the reduction of health disparities in cancer prevention and increasing early detection among vulnerable populations. Menon teaches across nursing curricula including graduate elective courses in conducting interventions with diverse populations, and conducting integrative literature reviews. She is the 2006 recipient of the first Investigator with a Brilliant Future Award from the American Academy of Nursing/Council for the Advancement of Nursing Science and a recognized expert in behavior change theory and interventions.<separator></separator>Vladimiro Mujica comes to ASU to teach chemistry and biochemistry in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences from Northwestern University where he was a chemistry research professor. He also held a joint appointment with Argonne National Laboratory. He has been a visiting professor at universities in Spain, France, Korea, Germany, Israel, and Sweden. Before joining Northwestern he was a chemistry professor at the Central University in Venezuela, his home country, where he was also a member of the National Research Council board of directors. Mujica's research focuses on theoretical chemistry. He is a leading expert in molecular electronics where he did groundbreaking work in developing models to explain electronic transport across molecules in nano-devices. He is currently interested in charge transfer in interfaces, a subject of considerable practical interest in solar energy.<separator></separator>Professor Shirley Rose brings to ASU's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences more than 25 years of experience in writing program administration. She is an established expert in the field who has had a strong impact on the profession through her scholarship, administrative roles and national leadership in writing program administration. Her stature was recognized when she was voted president of the Council of Writing Program Administrators, a position she held from 2005-2007. Her scholarly work includes exploring and understanding writing program administrative work as an intellectual endeavor, a position that contributes to an innovative vision of writing programs and writing pedagogy. She has co-edited two collections on the subject: The WPA as Researcher: Inquiry in Action and The WPA as Theorist: Making Knowledge Work.<separator></separator>Janet Franklin is a landscape ecologist and biogeographer who is interested in natural disturbance and dynamics of plant communities, and human impacts on the landscape. She is an expert on mapping the distributions of species to support conservation planning and global change studies. Her book on this subject will be published by Cambridge University Press in December. Franklin comes to ASU's School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning and the School of Life Sciences in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences with more than 25 years of experience as an environmental scientist. She conducts multidisciplinary research with colleagues and students and combines field work with quantitative analysis and models to understand impacts of humans on ecosystems.<separator></separator>Damian J. Martinez joins ASU's School of Criminology and Criminal Justice in the College of Public Programs from Rutgers University where he held a joint appointment with the School of Criminal Justice and the Department of Social Work. Martinez's background includes experience as a social worker and his research interests include prisoner reintegration and resettlement, support mechanisms for released prisoners and offender rehabilitation. He co-edited "How Offenders Transform Their Lives" and has written extensively about former prisoners reintegrating into society, their family relationships after release and Hispanics in the criminal justice system.<separator></separator>Odesma O. Dalrymple, a native of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, will teach engineering in the College of Technology and Innovation at ASU. Dalrymple's research interests include identifying and improving instructional practices that motivate students and prepare them to adapt their skills to accommodate the ever-changing field of engineering. Her dissertation research on the pedagogical value of take-apart activities is part of her initial work in this area. She is also interested in understanding the experiences of engineering students and has explored the role of extracurricular activities in the professional preparation of engineering students, factors influencing engineering students' choice of the discipline, and the underrepresentation of minorities and women in engineering.