President Fram Virjee welcomed new members of the tenure-track faculty at an Aug. 20 dinner reception held in their honor. The 25 new tenure-track faculty mingled with college deans, several department chairs and others after a daylong orientation.
“Thank you for choosing Cal State Fullerton,” said Virjee, who joked that he had looked up the faculty members on LinkedIn profiles. “You have come to us from all over the world and earned your terminal degrees at some amazing places, including Stanford and Purdue to UC Berkeley and yes, Cal State Fullerton.”
Virjee encouraged the new faculty members to get involved in campus by attending athletics and cultural events and the multicultural programs held throughout the year — even Discoverfest, a two-day gathering of the university’s student clubs and organizations. “There is nothing better for our students than to see their faculty there.”
He concluded by inviting all the attendees to introduce themselves, share what college they are teaching in and “tell us what we can’t find by googling you.”
The new campus members, all assistant professors except where noted, and their school/departments, by college, are:
College of the Arts
Art — Mateo Tannatt
College of Communications
Communication Sciences and Disorders — Rahul Chakraborty, associate
Communications — Ricardo Valencia
College of Education
Literacy and Reading — Joyce Gomez-Najarro
Special Education — Calli Lewis Chiu
College of Engineering and Computer Science
Computer Engineering — Ankita Mohapatra and Juan Portillo
College of Health and Human Development
Child and Adolescent Studies — Christa Greenfader
Public Health — Bo Park
Kinesiology — Jason Bennett, associate
Nursing — Manal Alatrash, Hannah Fraley and Angela Sojobi
Social Work — Gordon Capp
College of Humanities and Social Sciences
English, Comparative Literatures and Linguistics — Kenneth Van Bik
Modern Languages and Literatures — Daniel Rueckert
Religious Studies — Mugdha Yeolekar
Sociology — Taylor Cruz
College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics
Chemistry and Biochemistry — Stevan Pecic
Mihaylo College of Business and Economics
Accounting — Alexander Browne
Finance — Xin Che, Fangfang Du and Jia Xie
Information Systems and Decision Sciences — Daoji Li
Management — Gergana Todorova, associate
Joining in January:
Justin Tran, assistant professor of mechanical engineering
Nancy Watkins, assistant professor of educational leadership