Bowdoin welcomed 35 new faculty members this academic year, 11 of whom are in tenure-track positions.
Todd Berzon, having finished his postdoctoral work on late antique heresiologies at Columbia University in 2013, is the only new tenure-track professor in the Department of Religion. He is currently exploring representations of the tongue in ancient Judaic and Christian traditions. He said he is looking forward to the balanced environment between teaching and conducting research.
“I want to be at a school that values both teaching and researching, where neither seems to be the exclusion of the other,” said Berzon.
The economics department received three tenure-track professors this year, including Gonca Senel, who is teaching two sections of Principles of Macroeconomics this semester. Having earned her doctorate at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Senel said she is thrilled to be in a smaller liberal arts environment where she can develop closer relationships with her students as well as colleagues across different disciplines.
“At UCLA, every department is a small, self-sufficient island,” said Senel. “The inter-departmental link that we have here is something really special that cannot be found in bigger universities.”
Zachary Rothschild, a professor at Carleton College, joined the Department of Psychology. As a social psychologist, his research focuses on the effects of existential concerns on people’s attitudes, beliefs and behaviors. He is currently teaching Data Analysis and will be teaching a 2000-level Social Psychology course and an advanced Existential Social Psychology seminar in the spring.
Also joining the psychology department is Hannah Reese, who came to Bowdoin with a desire to return to teaching after spending time serving as a staff psychologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and doing research at Harvard Medical School.
“I really love the people I worked with and the research I had done, but I also really want to get back to teaching and working with the students,” Reese said.
Her postdoctoral work focused on body dysmorphic disorder, and she is currently investigating the nature and treatment of anxiety and obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorders.
Dana Byrd was a postdoctoral fellow at Bowdoin for the past two years before being hired to a tenure-track position in the art history department this fall. Her research focuses on American art and material culture. Byrd is planning to write a book on the physical artifacts of life on plantations from the Civil War era through the end of Reconstruction.
“I’m really interested in how slavery and the end of slavery were portrayed and discussed in art, as well as the way people experienced it during and after the Civil War era,” Byrd said.
Even after spending two years at Bowdoin, Byrd said that she still appreciates the level of engagement her students exhibit inside and outside of the classroom, as well as the intellectually stimulating conversations she has with her colleagues and the academic resources the College offers.
“I was convinced to stay here because it is a really wonderful place,” said Byrd.