MMC Welcomes Ten New Faculty Members

MMC welcomes the 2008-2009 new faculty: (BACK ROW, from left) Peter D. Schaefer, Ph.D., assistant professor of communication arts; John Basil, assistant professor of theater arts; Giovanna Chesler, assistant professor of communication arts in video production; Christine E. Hutchins, Ph.D., assistant professor of English; and Corey Liberman, Ph.D., assistant professor of communication arts. (FRONT ROW, from left) Julie Huntington, Ph.D., assistant professor of French and francophone studies; Ken Ching, Ph.D., assistant professor of mathematics; and Katalin Grubits Othmer, Ph.D., assistant professor of mathematics. NOT PICTURED: Vandana Rao, Ph.D., professor of business management and Chair of the Division of Accounting and Business Management; and Brian Siress, communication arts instructor.

“Being at a smaller, more intimate college provides the opportunity to become part and parcel of a collegiate network,” said incoming Assistant Professor of Communication Arts, Corey Liberman, Ph.D. “I have seen firsthand the relationships shared between and among students, between and among faculty, and between and among students and faculty…I truly want to become a part of this.”

“I wanted to be part of a program where faculty had interests in media, but also other facets of the communication field, such as interpersonal communication, small group communication, organizational communication, and rhetoric, to name a few,” said Dr. Liberman, who will be teaching courses in promotional and professional communication. “It was the combination of a strong, dedicated, and accomplished faculty, and the nature of the department and its curriculum, that truly drew me to the college.” 

In March, Dr. Liberman completed his Ph.D. at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, where he also served as an assistant instructor in the School of Communication, Information and Library Studies since 2006.

Giovanna Chesler, M.F.A., joins the College as Assistant Professor of Communication Arts in Video Production. In 2007, Chesler divided her time between the University of California, San Diego and American University in Washington, D.C., where she taught as an assistant professor and a visiting assistant professor respectively. She is currently directing a short fiction film “Bye Bi Love” and a new media work “HPV Boredom,” which uses Web 2.0 technology to create a web portal connecting a geographically disparate population of people infected with HPV.

Since 2006, Brian Siress, M.A., has been Adjunct Instructor in Communication Arts at Marymount Manhattan. This fall, Siress joins the Division as an Instructor. He received his M.A. in communication arts & media studies/film & video production from NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Communication, Education and Human Development in 2001. 

Specializing in communication theory, Peter D. Schaefer, Ph.D., joins MMC as Assistant Professor of Communication Arts. Previously, he taught at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, where he earned his M.A. in 2005 and his doctorate this past summer. Parallel to his graduate studies, Dr. Schaefer has been teaching communication theory, media theory, media criticism and public speaking in the Iowa Communication Studies program since fall 2003. 

Julie Huntington, Ph.D., joins Marymount Manhattan as Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies. For the last three years, Dr. Huntington served as an assistant professor of French at Clemson University, where she taught an 18-day interdisciplinary travel study course in Ghana. Dr. Huntington has published articles on literature and pedagogy in Foreign Language Annals, Bulletin Baudelairien, Modern Language Journal and French Review. Her manuscript Sounding Off: Music and Identity in West African and Caribbean Francophone Novels is currently under contract for publication with Temple University Press.

With an emphasis on Medieval and Renaissance literature, Christine E. Hutchins, Ph.D., joins Marymount as Assistant Professor of English and has been Assistant Professor at Kingsborough Community College, CUNY since 2004. Before that, she was Assistant Professor at East Carolina University, UNC, where she taught undergraduate and graduate courses in Medieval and Renaissance literature and theater.

“For me, research, writing, teaching and learning have always been creative, exploratory and collaborative,” Dr. Hutchins said. “Marymount Manhattan’s small class sizes and its close teaching, advising and research relationships among faculty and students—sciences as well as communications arts—seem to me to offer a real opportunity for faculty and students to work closely with one another in an interdisciplinary, intellectually challenging and creative environment.” 

Dr. Hutchins has taught literature, theater and writing since 1991, when she began as a graduate teaching intern at Lehman College, CUNY. She received her Ph.D. in English from The Graduate Center at CUNY in 1999 and her forthcoming article in the November/December 2008 issue of The Ben Jonson Journal entitled “Chaucer and the Problem of ‘Recreative’ Poetics in Renaissance England” is part of her larger book project examining shifts in poetic aesthetics in the late 16th century.

John Basil, M.F.A., the founder and producing artistic director of the American Globe Theatre in New York City, is now Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts. As a teacher of the “First Folio” approach to Shakespeare acting, Basil has 20 years of teaching experience. He has spent 17 years at the undergraduate level, teaching at Columbia University, University of Wyoming, University of Colorado, Bradley University, Penn State University, Montclair State University, and Long Island University/C.W. Post. Basil has also taught three years of graduate level theater at Asolo Conservatory at Florida State University and Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. 

“I hope with my 20 years of running a professional theatre company here in New York I can bring all of that experience to my work and my students,” Basil said. “This will hopefully bridge the gap between school and the real world.” The Mathematics Department welcomes Ken Ching, Ph.D., and Katalin Grubits Othmer, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Dr. Ching, a New York native, comes to Marymount Manhattan by way of Cambridge, M.A., where he taught graduate and undergraduate courses in algebra, geometry, calculus, statistics, number theory, probability and cryptography at Salem State College. Dr. Ching received his doctorate in Mathematics from Tufts University. 

Assistant Professor Dr. Othmer has taught both mathematics and physics at the undergraduate level for the last seven years. She recently completed her Ph.D. in physics at the California Institute of Technology after receiving her M.S. at the Institute in 2004. While working as a Teaching Assistant with the Institute, she received an Associated Students of Caltech Teaching Award for excellence in teaching as the best T.A. of an undergraduate course.

Vandana Rao, Ph.D., joins MMC as Professor of Business Management and Chair of the Division of Accounting and Business Management, returning to New York to begin her tenure after over twenty years of teaching in India, Pennsylvania and Indiana. After receiving her Ph.D. from SUNY, Stony Brook, Dr. Rao began her teaching career at Shippensburg University, PA, and went on to join the faculty at H.P. University in India where she also served as Deputy Director of the Population Research Center in their Department of Economics. From 1993-2008 at Indiana University East, Dr. Rao achieved the rank of Professor of Economics in the Business and Economics Division. 

Marymount Manhattan College is an urban, independent, liberal arts college. The mission of the College is to educate a socially and economically diverse population by fostering intellectual achievement and personal growth and by providing opportunities for career development.

Published: September 04, 2008