UVA will open the 2006-07 school year with 80 new faculty, a talented (and tenure-able!) group of the nation’s best and brightest fledgling Wahoos.
Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement Gertrude Fraser says the school is competing “extremely well” with private and highly ranked public schools to attract faculty.
They’re still working on diversity, though. UVA remains light on Hispanic/Latino faculty, Fraser says, which puts UVA at a disadvantage against, say, competing top public universities in the west (cough…Berkeley).
Here’s your extremely selective, somewhat random guide to the arriving superstars.
Toby Heytens, a 2000 UVA Law grad, has clerked for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, published articles in the Yale Law Journal and been a visiting assistant professor at Cornell. Plus, his practice, O’Melveny & Myers LLP of Washington, DC, worked on United States v. Martha Stewart. And that’s a good thing.
Ian Skurnik will join the Darden School as an assistant professor. With a B.A. in psychology from the University of Utah, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in social psychology from Princeton, Skurnik’s specialties are cognition, persuasion and decision-making processes in older consumers.
Noreen McDonald joins the architecture school with an undergrad degree from Harvard and a Ph.D. in city and urban planning from UC-Berkeley. She’s currently studying how the “built environment” affects how kids walk to school. Aww.
Robert M. Strieter, M.D. is the medical school’s new whiz. With degrees from the University of Michigan and Michigan State, he’s the new chair of the internal medicine division, known for research on lung cancer, pulmonary fibrosis, acute lung injury and lung transplantation. Geez…kinda makes you want to avoid the smoking section.
And finally, Andrea Press will become chair of the media studies department in the College of Arts and Sciences. With a Ph.D. from Berkeley and a slew of published work, Press studies feminist theory and the female culture audience. She’s bringing her husband, Bruce Williams, with her (he’ll also join the media studies department). Rock on, girl.
