IAS adds six new faculty members

IAS undertook three faculty searches this year, resulting in six new hires in the areas of Rhetoric & Composition, Data Visualization & Analytics, and Creative Writing & Poetics. To learn more about who will be joining IAS next fall, read below.

Ching-In Chen — Ching-In Chen is the author of The Heart's Traffic: a novel in poems (Arktoi/Red Hen Press, 2009), recombinant (Kelsey Street Press, 2017; winner of the 2018 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry); and to make black paper sing (speCt! Books, 2019). Chen is also co-editor of The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities (South End Press, 2011; AK Press 2016) and Here Is a Pen: an Anthology of West Coast Kundiman Poets (Achiote Press, 2009). Born of Chinese immigrants, they have received fellowships from Kundiman, Lambda, Watering Hole, Callaloo, Can Serrat, Storyknife and Imagining America and are a member of Macondo and Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation. A community organizer, they have worked in Asian American communities in San Francisco, Oakland, Riverside and Boston. A graduate of Tufts University, they earned an MFA in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts from the University of California, Riverside and a PhD in English with a concentration in Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. They currently teach creative writing at Sam Houston State University. They join IAS as an assistant professor.

Joseph Ferrare – Joe Ferrare is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Policy Studies & Evaluation at the University of Kentucky. He received his Ph.D. in Curriculum Theory and Research from UW Madison in 2011. Ferrare describes his research as using “relational sociology and public policy analysis to examine social inequities in education and the reform movements seeking to transform these inequities through market-based policies.” His research uses a combination of data analysis visualization techniques to pursue a “broader, long-term project of learning how our public institutions can be more responsive to the structures and narratives that sustain racial, gender, and economic oppression.” A finalist for the 2018 “Outstanding Teaching Award” from the University of Kentucky and recipient of the 2017 “Teacher Who Made a Difference” award from the University of Kentucky College of Education, Ferrare describes his pedagogy as being influenced by the work of John Dewey, and has taught courses on research methods, quantitative methods, and evaluation alongside courses on education policy. He joins IAS as an assistant professor.

Enrique Reynoso – Enrique Reynoso is currently an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin Platteville, having completed his doctorate at the University of Purdue in 2016 with specializations in professional and technical writing, and minority rhetorics. His teaching includes courses on technical writing; writing, editing and publishing in multiple media; news writing; and business writing. He received his Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Texas Pan American and worked for two years as a reporter for a weekly newspaper before returning to graduate school. He joins IAS as a full-time lecturer.

Neil Simpkins – Neil Simpkins recently completed his Ph.D. in Composition and Rhetoric at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His dissertation, “On Being Accommodated: The Rhetorical Tactics of Disabled College Student Writers” draws upon qualitative interview data to explore how disabled students navigate the ableist rhetorics that complicate learning how to write in academic contexts. He has served as assistant director of UW-Madison’s English 201 intermediate writing program and the UW-Madison Writing Center. He joins IAS as an assistant professor.

Caleb Trujillo – Caleb Trujillo is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at Michigan State University. He earned his doctorate in Biology from Purdue University in 2015. Trujillo’s scholarship examines how biology students learn to think about mechanisms and systems. His publishes articles on student learning, teaching innovations, and pedagogical activities to improve students’ understanding of living systems. Highlighting the “importance of engaging students in authentic scientific practices, such as building models and constructing explanations, as a way to teach and learn science,” Trujillo’s current scholarship explores the possibilities of using information sciences to inform science education. In addition, Trujillo has done substantial work with the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS). He joins IAS as an assistant professor.

Ashley Velázquez – Ashley Velázquez has a Ph.D. in Second Language Studies/ESL from Purdue University and an M.A. in TESOL from Wright State University. In her dissertation, “What’s the ‘problem’ statement? An investigation of problem-based writing in a First Year Engineering program,” Velázquez used an iterative quantitative-qualitative approach to written discourse analysis to (1) explore the linguistic resources (e.g., formulaic language) that L1 and L2 students use when writing apprenticeship genres, (2) capture faculty perceptions of effective communication, and (3) identify gaps in faculty expectations and pedagogical materials. She was selected by the American Association of University Women (AAUW) as a dissertation fellow for 2018-2019. Velázquez is also a researcher with Crow (the Corpus and Repository of Writing), a multi-institutional, interdisciplinary writing studies research team funded by Humanities Without Walls consortium and the ACLS Digital Extension grant. Velázquez is committed to building anti-racist pedagogy, starting first with interrogating the theoretical underpinnings of translingualism. Her work situates translingualism within a post-racial paradigm and argues that translingualism, in its current iteration, largely ignores the socio-historical context of race in the U.S., often conflating the writing instruction needs of African American students with those of international students. She joins IAS as an assistant professor.