New faculty to strengthen academic programs

New College of Florida will be welcoming 14 new faculty this fall in a variety of disciplines, from mathematics and chemistry, to creative writing and philosophy.
Among them will be a new director of the Master’s in Data Science program.

Dr. Burçin Bozkaya has been a professor of business analytics at Sabanci University’s Sabanci School of Management in Istanbul, Turkey, where he conducted research on big data analytics; customer behavior analytics and predictive analytics in finance, insurance and telecom; spatio-temporal modeling and analysis; transportation/logistics modeling and optimization; geographic information systems and decision support systems.
He’s also been a visiting professor at the Media Lab at MIT, analyzing high-dimensional data sets with millions of bank transactions and customer demographics, Syrian refugee call data records, insurance premium contracts and points of interest.
He received his Ph.D. in management science in 1999 at the University of Alberta, Canada. He has a master’s and bachelor’s degrees, both in industrial engineering, from Bilkent University in Turkey.
“I heard about New College from a colleague at MIT,” Bozkaya said. “I liked the fact that it was a liberal arts college with a number of diverse programs.”
He said even though the Data Science program is relatively new, “It’s a strong program. I looked at the curriculum, the students, their backgrounds. It’s an impressive setup.”
He visited New College last November. “I liked the campus, the way it’s situated within a cluster of institutions. I saw a lot of interesting activity around town. I had very good impressions, quite positive. It’s a really good match.”
While he said the Data Science program has good relationships with area businesses, he’d like to strengthen it. “I want to establish new partnerships with even more companies. It’s important because they bring in good project ideas for students to work on.”
“The partnership with industry is very valuable,” he explained. Many times these partnerships provide insight into what their needs are, which can help a program determine what courses should be offered.
Another important thing he says he’ll focus on is maintaining academically strong cohorts with increased international participation.
The other new faculty joining New College for the Fall 2019 semester are:
Angela Buck
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Creative Writing
Recently taught courses at the University of Denver and University of Colorado, Denver, including Advanced Creative Writing—Fiction, Writing and Research, and Core Composition II.
Angela also has a book, “Masters and Servants: Stories” under consideration.
Ph.D., English, Creative Writing (Fiction), 2018, University of Denver
MFA, Poetry, 2012, University of Massachusetts-Amherst
B.A., 2005, The Evergreen State College
Kent Cao
Postdoctoral, Asian Art History
Ph.D. candidate in East Asian Art and Archaeology at Princeton University.
Research primarily focuses on the florescence of the local bronze cultures in the middle Yangtze River valley, and the formation of China in the second millennium BCE from an indigenous, frontier, and non-dynastic perspective. He is interested in the interaction between bronze metallurgy and visual forms, and their spread from the East Asia Mainland through the Korean Peninsula to the Japanese Archipelago.
Ph.D., (expected 2019), Princeton University
MSt, Archaeology, 2011, University College London, the Institute of Archaeology
Intercollegiate Undergraduate Student, 2011, Anthropology, The London School of Economics and Political Science
Emily Carr
Visiting Assistant Professor, Creative Writing
Dr. Carr was the program director of the MFA in Creative Writing program at Oregon State University-Cascades.
Emily’s fourth book, Name Your Bird Without A Gun: a Tarot Romance, is forthcoming from Spork in 2019. Recent literary magazine publications include poems in Prairie Schooner, So To Speak, and the Tampa Review and an essay in The American Poetry Review.
Ph.D., English, Creative Writing (Poetry), University of Calgary
MFA, Poetry, University of North Carolina-Wilmington
B.A., English/Piano Performance, University of Missouri-Columbia
Tabea Cornel
Visiting Assistant Professor, Medical Humanities
Dr. Cornel has taught undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of History and Sociology of Science.
Ph.D. (expected 2019), Department of History and Sociology of Science, University of
Pennsylvania.
Graduate Student Certificate in Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2015, University of Pennsylvania.
M.A., 2013, Institute of Philosophy and the History of Literature, Science, and Technology, Technical University of Berlin.
B.Sc., Mathematics, 2010, Institute of Mathematics, Free University of Berlin.
Tetyana Dzyadevych
Visiting Assistant Professor, Russian Language and Literature
Dr. Dzyadevych has taught Russian language and literature courses at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Department of Slavic and Baltic Languages and Literatures, and at California State University, Northridge.
Ph.D., Slavic Studies, University of Illinois at Chicago.
Ph.D., Eastern Slavic Literatures, 2005, Maria Curie-Sklodowska University of Lublin, Poland.
M.A., Theory and History of Literature; Comparative Studies, 1999, National University of “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy,” Ukraine.
Specialist Degree, Philology, 1997, Ukrainian State Pedagogical University
Kris Fennie
Assistant Professor, Epidemiology
Dr. Fennie was recently a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology, Robert Stempel College Of Public Health And Social Work, at Florida International University.
His ongoing funded research at the Florida Department of Health at Broward includes a community based participatory community health assessment, working with transgender community leaders in Broward County to determine health care needs and priorities of the community; women-centered HIV care practices to identify effective provider and system women-centered HIV care practice; and a mind-body intervention to reduce symptoms among people aging with HIV.
Ph.D., 2003, ID Epidemiology, Yale University
MPhil., 1994, ID Epidemiology, Yale University
M.PH. 1991, D Epidemiology Yale University
MSc, 1986, Entomology, University of Alberta
B.A., 1982, Biology, The Colorado College
Michael Gorup
Assistant Professor, Constitutional Law
Dr. Gorup was recently a lecturer of political science at the Critical Writing Program of the University of Pennsylvania.
His areas of specialization include political thought and development in the United States; modern and contemporary political theory; the politics of race and ethnicity; constitutionalism and constituent power.
Ph.D., Government, 2018, Cornell University.
M.A., Politics, 2010, The New School for Social Research, New York City
B.A. in Philosophy (with honors), 2009, Eugene Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts, New York City.
Rebekah Jones
Visiting Assistant Professor, Mathematics
Recently at the University of Cincinnati, Dr. Jones taught applied calculus, college algebra and mathematics of social choice.
Ph.D. candidate, expected May 2019, Mathematics, University of Cincinnati.
B.S. in Mathematics, 2014, University of Cincinnati
Chris Noble
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Dr. Noble has been a visiting assistant professor of philosophy at New College since 2018. He’s also taught at The Ethics Program at Villanova University and Rowan University.
Academic interests include early modern philosophy, history and philosophy of science, classical Chinese philosophy, medieval philosophy, continental philosophy, ethics. Languages: English, German (speaking and reading), Latin (reading), French (reading)
Ph.D., Philosophy, 2016, Villanova University.
M.A., Philosophy, 2009, Villanova University.
B.A., Philosophy, German Studies, 2005, Boston College.
Tim O’Donnell
Production Manager/Technical Director
O’Donnell was recently an education specialist at the Asolo Repertory Theatre in Sarasota. He has also served as the director of education at the Lake Dillon Theatre Company in Dillon, Colorado, and general manager at The Lark in New York City.
B.F.A., Theatre Arts/Music, 2003, Adelphi University (Cum Laude)
Levente Pap
Visiting Assistant Professor of Chemistry
Professor Pap was recently project supervisor and lab coordinator at the University of Wyoming.
Ph.D., Chemistry, Expected May 2019, University of Wyoming.
M.S., Chemistry, 2013, University of Leeds Leeds, UK
B.S., Chemistry (Cum Laude), 2012, University of Eötvös Loránd Budapest, Hungary
Chris Pedersen
Associate in Physics
Pedersen has been doing back-end web development using PHP, SQL, and Laravel, designing a database for handling all match information and a program to read data from Google Sheets to an SQL database. He was a graduate researcher at Florida State University, in experimental Hadronic physics, specifically data analysis for hadron spectroscopy.
M.S., Physics, 2012, Florida State University
B.A., Physics, 2011, New College of Florida.
Andrey Skripnikov
Assistant Professor, Applied Statistics
Professor Skripnikov was a postdoctoral associate and lecturer at the University of Houston, teaching graduate-level courses in Statistical Computing and Biomedical Modeling, conducting research in the areas of high-dimensional data and time series analysis. Intended applications include, among others, gene expression data and stock market crash prediction.
Ph.D., Statistics, 2017, University of Florida
M.S., Statistics, 2015, University of Florida
BSc in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, 2012, Lomonosov Moscow State University
— Jim DeLa is digital content specialist at New College of Florida.