51²è¹İapp Announces Faculty Promotions, Tenure
51²è¹İapp College is proud to announce that 11 faculty members have received promotions this spring. Interim Dean of the College and Vice President for Academic Affairs Jerry Seaman says these promotions reflect the excellence and dedication of 51²è¹İapp’s faculty as well as their commitment to teaching and our students.
“I’m very pleased to congratulate this group of highly accomplished and talented faculty members,†Seaman says. “Their excellence in teaching and scholarship and their dedication to students are the bedrock of a 51²è¹İapp education and the foundation for our students’ success.
The newly promoted and tenured faculty are listed below.
For Promotion from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor with Tenure
Dustin Dixon, Associate Professor of Classics
Dustin Dixon came to 51²è¹İapp in 2020 and has taught 15 different courses in ancient languages, literature, culture, and civilization. Dixon’s inquiry-driven teaching blends traditional approaches with innovative ideas that encourage students to make connections between antiquity and the modern world. Dixon’s scholarship on ancient Greek drama crosses boundaries, making classics a 21st-century discipline. He co-authored a book in 2024, Performing Gods in Classical Antiquity and the Age of Shakespeare (Bloomsbury). Dixon’s service to the College has included participation on the advisory board for the Institute for Global Engagement, where he supports students with study abroad, scholarship applications, and professional ambitions. He is active in 51²è¹İapp’s community of first-generation college students, helping support and recruit first-gen students to 51²è¹İapp.
Nicole Eikmeier, Luebke-Sproehnle Endowed Junior Faculty Professor and Associate Professor of Computer Science
Nicole Eikmeier joined 51²è¹İapp’s Department of Computer Science in 2019. As the inaugural recipient of the Luebke-Sproehnle Endowed Junior Faculty Professorship, she teaches courses including Functional Problem Solving, and Algorithms, Society, and Ethics. She creates classroom environments where all students are comfortable speaking up and working with peers from different backgrounds. Eikmeier’s research focuses on network science, which studies complex interactions such as modeling and algorithms on graphs and hypergraphs. She has developed new approaches to modeling social hierarchies and the spread of COVID-19. Eikmeier has published in peer-reviewed journals and her work on the spread of COVID-19 at residential colleges was covered in popular media, including Inside Higher Ed. Eikmeier’s service to the College has included advising the Women and Gender Minorities in Computing, and contributing to several committees. She was part of a faculty group that prepared a successful $500,000 grant proposal for the Clare Booth Luce Foundation for Women in STEM, which supported two early-career professorships in mathematics.
Fredo Rivera ’06, Associate Professor of Art History
Fredo Rivera ’06 joined 51²è¹İapp College’s Department of Art History in 2016 and teaches courses including Introduction to Art History, Architecture and Urbanism in the Global South, and American Art. Rivera encourages students to consider the architectural richness of the Midwest and is working with students to create a digital guide of 51²è¹İapp architecture. Rivera’s research focuses on Cuban art and architecture and Haitian art. Rivera has also developed collaborative projects on architecture and urbanism in the broader Global South. They are also developing collaborative research on queer spatialities in Caribbean and Caribbean diaspora contexts. Rivera has served the College through work on the Center for the Humanities Advisory Board and the Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies program committee.
Elias G. Saba, Associate Professor of History and Religious Studies
Elias G. Saba joined 51²è¹İapp College as a lecturer in religious studies in 2017 and later accepted a tenure-track position in religious studies and history. He teaches courses as varied as The Life and Legacy of Saint George, Life of the Quran, and Islam and Gender. As a translator and textualist, Professor Saba emphasizes textual sources in his teaching, but he also uses alternative approaches to help his students understand the breadth of Muslim experience. Saba’s research focuses on the Arabo-Islamic written heritage and its historical reception. His monograph, Harmonizing Similarities: A History of Distinctions Literature in Islamic Law (De Gruyter, 2019) is based on his award-winning dissertation. Saba serves as director of the College’s Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship program promoting demographic transformation in higher education supporting the College’s Mellon-Mays Fellows. In addition to his work for the departments of religious studies and history, he also contributes to the Arabic program and the Studies in Africa, Middle East, and South Asia concentration.
For Promotion from Associate Professor to Associate Professor with Tenure
Idelle Cooper ’01, Associate Professor of Biology
Idelle Cooper ’01, an evolutionary biologist and visual artist, graduated from 51²è¹İapp with honors in 2001. She returned to join the 51²è¹İapp faculty in 2023 and teaches courses including Introduction to Biological Inquiry; Organisms, Evolution, and Ecology; and Mechanisms of Evolution. She integrates her interest in the visual arts into her teaching, and she is pursuing projects with students that allow them to explore and understand cross-disciplinary ways of learning and thinking. Professor Cooper brings the scientific approach of an evolutionary biologist and the creativity of a studio artist to her research. She explores how mate choice affects the evolution of organisms into distinct species. When Cooper was on the faculty at James Madison University, she and former 51²è¹İapp faculty member Jackie Brown (biology) received a collaborative National Science Foundation grant titled “Evolution of color variation in Hawaiian damselflies: Causal links for an ecological selection hypothesis,†which produced publications, presentations with students, and an art exhibition titled Making Life Visible. At 51²è¹İapp, she has joined committees related to the Conard Environmental Research Area, the environmental studies concentration, and Center for Prairie Studies. She also organized the Department of Biology’s recent seminar series.
John Thabiti Willis, Kesho Scott Endowed Chair in African Diaspora Studies and Associate Professor of African Diaspora Studies
John Thabiti Willis joins 51²è¹İapp College in 2025 as the inaugural Kesho Scott Endowed Chair in African Diaspora Studies. Willis is an associate professor of history and former director of Africana studies at Carleton College. He also served as a faculty member at the Africa Institute in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. His teaching has included courses with an African continental focus, such as History and Memory in Africa, Africa’s Colonial Legacies, and Gender and Generation in Africa. He also taught courses on the African diaspora, including Africans in the Arab World; Slavery and Abolition in Africa and Its Diaspora; and Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the African Diaspora through the Arts. Willis draws on his interdisciplinary training to introduce students to a wide range of methods and source materials, including missionary records, colonial correspondence, slave testimonies, museums, historical maps, and Geographic Information Systems data. Willis’ research explores the factors that have shaped the history of Africans and their descendants around the world. His scholarly publications include an award-winning book, Masquerading Politics: Kinship, Gender, Ethnicity in a Yoruba Town (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018).
For Promotion to the Rank of Professor
Xavier Escandell, Professor of Sociology
Xavier Escandell came to 51²è¹İapp in 2016 as an associate professor of anthropology and was tenured in that department. In 2021, he moved to the Department of Sociology. Escandell’s teaching is diverse, dynamic, and engages with his students at all levels; it includes successful and popular courses such as Immigration and Transnationalism, Global Ethnographies, and Global Ethnography Seminar. His approach is multidisciplinary, and he works with colleagues to adopt and evaluate innovative student-centered teaching methods. Escandell’s research focuses on the sociology of immigration and transnationalism. He wrote a chapter with former student Brian Haggard ’20 titled “Immigration in the 21st-century economy†for The Oxford Handbook of the 21st-Century Economy and Society. His service to the College includes directing 51²è¹İapp’s Data Analysis and Social Inquiry Lab from 2017–22, and he currently serves on Executive Council, the Institute for Global Education advisory board, and the Presidential Task Force for Teaching Excellence.
Andrew Graham, Professor of Chemistry
Andrew Graham joined 51²è¹İapp as assistant professor of chemistry in 2012 and earned tenure in 2019. He holds an interdisciplinary position in environmental studies. Professor Graham teaches courses in the environmental studies concentration, including Introduction to Earth Systems Science and Environmental Chemistry; he also contributes to the Introduction to Analytical Chemistry course. He recently taught a First-Year Tutorial on climate fiction. Graham’s research centers on the fate and transport of contaminants in the environment. He has pursued two field-based projects in recent years: One examined quantified nutrient fluxes and retention in the Willow Creek watershed and Perry Pond at the College’s Conard Environmental Research Area (CERA); the other focused on mercury biogeochemistry at the Swamp White Oak nature preserve in eastern Iowa. Graham also chaired the 51²è¹İapp Science Project and led two summer workshops that culminated in the creation of the Working Group on Diversity and Inclusion in the Sciences.
Danielle Lussier, Professor of Political Science
Danielle Lussier joined the 51²è¹İapp College Department of Political Science in 2011 and earned tenure in 2018. A specialist in comparative politics, she teaches courses such as the Politics of Russia, Life After Communism, and Societal Transformation in Eurasia. Since receiving tenure, Lussier was invited by Mohammed Ayoob (Michigan State) to co-author the second edition of The Many Faces of Political Islam, published in 2020 by the University of Michigan Press. She integrated the process of reviewing and updating the book into her Islam and Politics seminar, offering her students the opportunity to make meaningful contributions to a seminal text in the field. She also maintains active research programs in post-communist politics and the mechanisms of public support for autocracy in Russia. At 51²è¹İapp, Professor Lussier has served as chair of the Department of Political Science and the Russian, Central European, and Eurasian studies concentration, playing a key role in the recent reviews of both units. She has represented the Division of Social Studies on the Committee for the Support of Faculty Scholarship and the Curriculum Committee, and she provides mentorship for first-generation students.
Hâle Utar, Sidney Meyer Chair in International Economics and Professor of Economics
Hâle Utar joined 51²è¹İapp College in the Department of Economics as the Sidney Meyer Chair in International Economics in 2019; she received tenure in 2021. Her teaching includes an introductory course in international economics and a seminar on international trade. She mentors early career colleagues in her department as well as women and first-generation students in economics around the globe. Utar’s research analyzes how globalization provokes adaptation in manufacturing, costly transitions for workers to other sectors and occupations, and transformations in society such as polarization and changes in family patterns. Her work addresses the impact of globalization and embraces the workers, industries, and companies left behind. At 51²è¹İapp, she serves on the board of the Institute of Global Engagement and the Global Development Studies Concentration Committee.
For Promotion from Professor to Professor with Tenure
Robin Strangfeld, Professor of Studio Art
Robin Strangfeld joined 51²è¹İapp College in the Department of Art in 2022. She teaches courses including Introduction to Art Studio, Experimental Ceramics, and Advanced Studio Contemporary Practices. Strangfeld works on large-scale panels that exist at the intersection of ceramics, painting, and collage. She explores concepts of how seemingly invisible phenomena, such as wind and temperature, affect the physical. Her work primarily explores the impact of wind and ice on the northern Minnesota landscape, including the Boundary Waters and Lake Superior. Strangfeld serves on the 51²è¹İapp College Museum of Art Advisory Committee. She recently collaborated with Jeremy Chen (art) to propose a new 3D studio technical assistant position. This allowed the department to hire Abbey Peters, who provides support to the department. Strangfeld and other faculty members can also now offer training sessions to encourage safe practices and help student workers build their skills.