During the 2018-19 academic year, Colorado College hired 14 new faculty members. CC looks forward to welcoming each faculty member as they begin their tenure-track appointments. Colorado College also has hired four new Riley Scholars-in-Residence. The new tenure-track faculty are:

Ikemefuna (Ike) Agbanusi, Mathematics and Computer Science
Agbanusi received his Ph.D. in mathematics from Boston University and his B.S. in applied mathematics, magna cum laude, from the New Jersey Institute of Technology.  He was the J.L Doob research assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) before becoming a visiting assistant professor at Colgate University in 2016. His research focuses on the analysis of differential equations in the physical and social sciences, including the development of models that explain global behavior in social networks and the mechanisms that drive groups towards consensus or polarization. Analysis of partial differential equations, singular perturbations, dynamical systems, applied mathematics and microlocal and applied harmonic analysis are among Agbanusi’s areas of expertise. He has taught Mathematical Modeling in the Social Sciences, Ordinary Differential Equations, Single and Multi-Variable Calculus, Introduction to Dynamical Systems and Chaos, and Introductory Statistics.

Michael Angstadt, Environmental Studies
Angstadt received his Ph.D. in environmental politics from Colorado State University in 2018 and his J.D. with certificates in international and environmental law from Pace Law School in 2011. He graduated, summa cum laude, from Hartwick College in 2008 with a B.A. in political science and minors in environmental science and policy and history. Angstadt served as staff attorney for the City of Portsmouth from 2011 to 2012, and in recent years has taught at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the University of Wyoming. His scholarship includes “Securing Access to Justice Through Environmental Courts and Tribunals: A Case in Diversity,” published in the Vermont Journal of Environmental Law (2016), and “Stone in a Western Landscape: Ranchers, Conservationists, and Causal Stories in the American Serengeti,” under review by Review of Policy Research. Angstadt teaches International Law and Environment, Politics and the Judicial Process, Sustainable Development and Global Environmental Politics, and Judicial Politics.

Yogesh Chandrani, Religion and Asian Studies
Chandrani graduated from Columbia University with Ph.D., M. Phil, and M.A. degrees in anthropology. He received his B.A. from Hampshire College in 1989.  A faculty fellow and lecturer in the center for core curriculum at Columbia University from 2013 to 2015, Chandrani came to Colorado College as a visiting assistant professor of anthropology in 2015. At CC he has taught Culture, Religion and Politics in South Asia, Thinking about Nonviolence, Anthropology of War and Violence, and Interrogating Humanitarianism. He is now working on a book manuscript titled “Legacies of Colonial History: Region, Religion and Violence in Postcolonial Gujarat.” In January 2018 he organized the Mara Ahmed Gaylord Lecture, and he participates regularly in the Liberal Arts in Contemporary Context Reading Group. He has served on the First-Year Experience (FYE) Essay Competition and Writing Portfolio Committees.

Daniel Ellsworth, Mathematics and Computer Science
Ellsworth has been a visiting assistant professor of mathematics and computer science at Colorado College since 2017, and currently is the CC coding club mentor. Ellsworth earned a Ph.D. in computer science and a B.S. in computer and information science at the University of Oregon in 2017 and 2004 respectively.  He studies power management in large supercomputers used for big science, and is the first author of several articles including “Stimulating Power Scheduling at Scale” in The Fifth Workshop on Energy Efficient Super Computing (2017), and “Dynamic Power Sharing for Higher Job Throughput” in Super Computing (2015). Ellsworth also has collaborated with other scholars on high performance computing projects and supported undergraduate research. While at Colorado College, he has taught Computational Thinking, Computer Science I and II, Parallel Programming, Introduction to Software Engineering, and Introduction to Programming and Problem Solving.

Baran German, Film and Media Studies
German graduated from the University of Oregon with a Ph.D. in comparative literature and a certificate in women’s and gender studies in 2018.  He received his M.A., magna cum laude, in comparative literature from Istanbul Bilgi University in 2010 and his B.A. in American culture and literature, summa cum laude, from Baskent University in 2008. After completing his graduate work, German came to Colorado College as a visiting assistant professor of film and media studies. His research interests include Film and Media Theory, Transnational Film and Media, Middle Eastern Cinema, Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, and Queer Cinema. In 2017 he published an article, “Abjectly Melodramatic: The Monstrous Body and the Queer Politics of Are We Ok?” in Queer Studies in Media and Popular Culture. German has taught Melodrama in the World, Global Queer Cinema, and Introduction to Film Studies.

Christopher (Chris) Hunt, Religion
Hunt’s Ph.D. comes from the Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. He graduated from Illiff School of Theology with an M.A. in Theology, and from Anderson University with a B.A. in Bible and religion.  Last year, Hunt presented his paper, “Holy Sex, Queer Love, and the Ecstatic Encounter with the Transcendent in James Baldwin’s ‘Just Above My Head’,” at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Denver, and a second paper, “Queering Black Religion: James Baldwin, Disidentification, and Reimagining Black Faith,” at the Black Religion, Spirituality, and Culture Conference, Harvard Divinity School. Hunt has served as a guest lecturer in a graduate history course, Topics in American Religious History: African American Ministry, and has delivered lectures and facilitated discussions in a graduate theology course, Doctrine of God/Doctrine of Creation.

Adam Light, Physics
Light graduated from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2014 with a Ph.D. in physics, and received his B.S. in physics and B.A. in Spanish, summa cum laude, from Case Western Reserve University. He has coauthored numerous journal articles, including “Temperature and lifetime measurements in the SSX wind tunnel,” in Plasma (2018), and numerous poster presentations with undergraduates at Plasma Physics annual meetings. Light taught upper-division courses on electrodynamics and nonlinear dynamics at Earlham College from 2014-16. Since 2016, he has taught classical mechanics, advanced laboratory with electronic modules and a plasma physics seminar as a visiting assistant professor at Swarthmore College.

Nate Marshall, English
Marshall comes to Colorado College from Wabash College where he has been a visiting assistant professor of English and black studies in 2018-19 and 2015-16. He graduated from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan in 2014 after earning his M.F.A. in creative writing-poetry. He received his B.A. in English and African American diaspora studies from Vanderbilt University in 2012. Marshall’s vast collection of scholarship and creative work includes two books, “FINNA,” forthcoming in 2020, and “Wild Hundreds,” published in 2015 by University of Pittsburgh Press, for which he received the 2017 Great Lakes College Association New Writers Award and the 2016 Black Caucus of the American Library Association Book of The Year Award. His co-authored play, “No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks,” was produced by Manual Cinema and The Poetry Foundation in 2017, and reviewed by The New Yorker and Chicago Tribune, among others. He has taught Reading and Writing Poetry, Introduction to Short Fiction, Introduction to Creative Writing, Multicultural Women Poets, and The History and Politics of Hip Hop.

Rachel Montgomery Paupeck, Art
Paupeck is founder and principal of Montgomery Studios, an interdisciplinary design firm that focuses on experimental architectural interiors, events, installations, and the built environment. She earned a Masters of Architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design and a Sheridan Collegiate Teaching Certificate from Brown University. A 2002 graduate of Smith College, Paupeck majored in architecture and urbanism and completed a minor in fine art. Since 2015, she has taught undergraduate courses at the Pratt Institute; these courses include Positioning, Practice, Portfolio in which students learn about design as a profession and the role and responsibility of interior designers, and Language of Drawing 1 and 2, which focus on the communication of physical and conceptual ideas of space, materiality, light and construction, and on using drawing and representation tools and techniques, respectively. Paupeck also has taught Physical Model Making, Defining Space + Place, and Constructive Sketching at The New School and a design workshop, “Interventions in the Monument Creek Watershed,” at Colorado College.

Florencia Rojo, Sociology
Rojo completed her Ph.D. requirements and her dissertation, “Nowhere to Go: Immigrant Families and the Everyday Violence of Fear,” at the University of California, San Francisco. She is a graduate of DePaul University where she received her B.A. in sociology, summa cum laude, in 2011 with a concentration in health and human services. Rojo’s coauthored publications include “Men’s violence against women and men are inter-related: Recommendations for simultaneous intervention” in Social Science & Medicine (2015). In summer 2018 she presented her recent work, a paper titled “Inheritance and Transcendence: Managing Historic Trauma in Anti-Immigrant Times” at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Social Problems. This past year she has been an assistant adjunct professor in the Urban Sociology Social and Historical Studies Department at Mills College. Her teaching interests include urban sociology, health and medical sociology, and research methodology.

Danielle Porter Sanchez, History
Sanchez comes to Colorado College from Muhlenberg College, where she has been an assistant professor in the Department of History and the Africana Studies program since 2015. She received her Ph.D. and B.A. in history, in 2015 and 2008, respectively, from the University of Texas at Austin and her M.P.S. in Africana studies from Cornell University in 2010. Sanchez has taught a variety of courses including Power in the Potterverse, African History through Film, African Freedom Fighters, Identities, Power, and Revolutions in Francophone Africa, Urban Africa, and Popular Culture and Politics in Africa. She is the coeditor of several projects including the forthcoming collection, “African Islands: Leading Edges of Empire and Globalization.” Her book, “Free(ing) France in Colonial Brazzaville: Race, Urban Space, and the Making of Afrique Francaise Libre,” is under contract with Routledge, and forthcoming in 2019.

Monica Sanchez, Theatre
A professional actor, theatre director, producer, and playwright with numerous credits and appearances in plays, movies, and television, Sanchez has appeared in “Pozole,” “La Pastorela,” “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot,” “House of Cards,” “Dexter,” and “Grey’s Anatomy,” among other films and shows.  Her 2018 play, “Los Dreamers,” was a semi-finalist in the Bay Area Playwrights Festival and received The Rosa Parks Playwriting Award and The Kennedy Center Latinx Playwriting Award.  She received her M.F.A. in dramatic writing with distinction from the University of New Mexico — Albuquerque in 2018. She also received her Bachelor of University Studies from the University of Mexico, where she has taught classes on dramatic writing techniques and the principles and applications of “The Pilates Method.” Over the course of her career, Sanchez has taught at numerous schools and theatres in New Mexico and California.

Sarah Schanz, Geology
Schanz is completing a postdoctoral research fellowship in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Indiana University, Bloomington. She received her Ph.D. in earth and space sciences from the University of Washington in 2018, and graduated with a B.S. in geology, magna cum laude, from Western Washington University. Schanz’s research interests include the interaction of glacial-fluvial processes on sediment transport and terrace development, processes of floodplain widening in mountain rivers, and landscape dynamics under temporally and spatially varying fluvial and tectonic forcing. Schanz was the lead author on a 2016 publication, “Lithologic Controls on Valley Width and Strath Terrace Formation” in Geomorphology. She has taught courses on Rivers and Beaches and Field Geology at the University of Washington, and on Geomorphic Systems at California State University Monterey Bay.

Jake Smith, History
Smith came to Colorado College in 2017 as a visiting professor of history. He earned his Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in history from the University of Chicago, and received his B.A. in history from Reed College. His scholarship includes a journal article, “Adventures in Communism: Camp and Counterculture in East Berlin” in Imaginations (2017) and a chapter, “Apathy, Subversion, and the Network Sublime: Envisioning Youth Unrest in West Germany, 1980-1987” in an edited volume, “A European Youth Revolt? Youth Movements, Revolt, and Transgression in the 1980s” (2016). During the past two years, Smith has taught a variety of courses in the CC History Department including Mass Culture, Counterculture, and the Avant-Garde in Postwar Europe, Civilization in the West, The Age of Ideology, Between Marx and Coca-Cola: A Global History of 1968, Russia and the Soviet Union, and WWII and its Aftermath in Europe.

Additionally, CC welcomes four Riley Scholars-in-Residence:

Ryan Buyco, Asian Studies
Buyco finished his Ph.D. in Asian Studies at Cornell University this summer, just before beginning as a Riley Scholar at CC. His dissertation is titled “Islands of Entanglement: Reading a Transpacific Okinawa in the Philippines and Hawai’i.” Buyco’s research concerns a range of current communities in Okinawa, the Philippines, and Hawai’i, including their links to local and colonial histories, and the impact of the U.S. military presence in those areas. He looks at films and literature as well as historical writings, and is interested in the experience of immigrants in the Pacific, including issues of borders and discrimination. At Cornell, Buyco was a teaching assistant and taught a writing seminar. He will teach Asian Studies courses, including Asian Literature, Culture, and Film under U.S. Occupation, Introduction to Asian American Studies, and Asian Settler Colonialism, some of which will be cross-listed with REMS.

Gregorio Gonzales, Anthropology and Southwest Studies
Gonzales received his Ph.D. in sociocultural anthropology with a thematic emphasis in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands at The University of Texas at Austin in 2017. He has produced an eclectic, post-dissertation publishing record with pieces appearing in the New Mexico Magazine, Peace Review, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, and Red Ink, among others.  His research interests include indigenous sovereignty, indigeneity, Latinx indigeneities, intersections of indigeneity and blackness, and race in the U.S. Southwest borderlands. He is a community engaged scholar actively involved in Americans for Indian Opportunity (AIO) and youth development work with the Pueblo de Abiquiú Library & Cultural Center. Gonzales is Genízaro and traditionally-adopted Comanche from the borderlands of Comanchería and Genízaro Country in northern New Mexico.

Michael Kim ’05, Philosophy
Kim currently is working toward a Ph.D. in philosophy at Villanova University where he holds an M.A. Kim graduated summa cum laude from CC in 2005 with a B.A. in philosophy. His research interests include history of philosophy, phenomenology and logic, social and political philosophy and literature, critical theory, and aesthetics. The working title of his dissertation is “Image and Phenomenon: For a Critique of Appearance.” Kim has taught at Colorado College, CU Denver, Rowan University, and Villanova. This year he will be teaching Epistemology, Existentialism, and co-organizing (with Alberto Hernandez-Lemus) the Philosophy Department Colloquium Series, with a theme of indigenous philosophies.

Solomon Seyum, Geology
Seyum received his Ph.D. in geological and environmental sciences (2015) at Stanford University and his B.S. (2008) in geology, magna cum laude, at California State University, Los Angeles. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the Technical University of Denmark in the Center for Oil and Gas. Seyum is a structural geologist who specializes in rock fracture mechanics. He makes field measurements, analyzes rock samples for their constitutive and mechanical properties, and interprets geologic settings in an effort to describe causative forces acting on rock over Earth’s history. He has applied this technique to describe the formation of 50 to 200 million year old joints, veins, and pressure solution seams in southeast Utah, as well as to describe fracture geometries and their effect on fluid flow in Danish onshore groundwater reservoirs and in Danish offshore oil reservoirs. At CC, Seyum will teach regional geology in Southern California with an emphasis on fault behavior, mining and energy resources of the Earth, structural geology, and an independent study on engineering geology.