Welcome new 2023 Faculty!
ALAN BLANCO
Assistant Professor
School of Communication and Media
CHARLES BURKS
Associate Professor
Department of Theatre and Dance
MARCUS HARVEY
Assistant Professor
Department of Theatre and Dance
NICK KOLIN
Assistant Professor
Department of Theatre and Dance
SANDRA EULA LEE
Assistant Professor
Department of Art and Design
CHRISTINA RODRIGUEZ-UNALT
Assistant Professor
Department of Art and Design
CHLOE SARBIB
Assistant Professor
Department of Art and Design
ROBYN BECKER
Assistant Professor
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders
CLEWISTON CHALLENGER
Assistant Professor
Department of Counseling
BISOLA DUYILE
Assistant Professor
Department of Counseling
SEI EUN KIM
Assistant Professor
Department of Family Science and Human Development
KATE NEALON
Assistant Professor
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders
EUNICE PARK
Assistant Professor
Department of Public Health
LUIS TORRES
Assistant Professor
Department of Exercise Science and Physical Education
MINKYUNG CHOI
Assistant Professor
Department of Teaching and Learning
JESSE HA
Assistant Professor
Department of Teaching and Learning
WILLIAM PROFFITT
Assistant Professor
Department of Teaching and Learning
LIBBY BARAK
Assistant Professor
Department of Linguistics
SHANIQUA BRADLEY
Assistant Professor
Department of Social Work and Child Advocacy
STEFFI DIPPOLD
Associate Professor
Departments of English and History
ALEXANDRA GAYNOR
Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology
MANUEL GONZALEZ
Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology
AKINA UMEMOTO
Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology
NINA BAILEY
Assistant Professor
Department of Mathematics
ELLIOT HU-AU
Assistant Professor
School of Computing
ALEXIS KHURSIGARA
Assistant Professor
Department of Biology
WANLU LI
Assistant Professor
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
HAO LIU
Assistant Professor
School of Computing
THOMAS MUELLER
Assistant Professor
Department of Biology
OZLEM COSGUN
Associate Professor
Department of Information Management and Business Analytics
YAOU ZHOU
Assistant Professor
Department of Accounting and Finance
YIYING ZHU
Assistant Professor
Department of Management
VERONICA BETTS
Assistant Professor
School of Nursing
ELIZABETH FITZGERALD
Assistant Professor
School of Nursing
BRENDA MARSHALL
Full Professor
School of Nursing
PERRI MORENO
Librarian II
Student Success Librarian
Resource Faculty from each College or School are assigned to the New Faculty and provide informal guidance and support. The Resource Faculty also help facilitate the weekly orientation sessions.
LAURA LAKUSTA
Co-Director, New Faculty Program
Professor
Psychology Department
lakustal@montclair.edu
973-655-7951
Office Location: Dickson Hall 247
LAURA LAKUSTA is a Professor in the Department of Psychology. After completing an NIH funded postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University, Professor Lakusta joined the Montclair State University faculty in 2008. She teaches a wide range of courses, including Developmental Psychology both at the undergraduate and graduate level, Child Psychology, and Introduction to Statistical Methods in Psychology. Professor Lakusta is the recipient of a grant from the National Science Foundation that has supported her research exploring how infants conceptualize events and how such preverbal representations may support early language acquisition. She has numerous peer-reviewed publications including recent publications in the journals Infancy, Language Learning and Development and Cognitive Science.
ELIZABETH EMERY
Co-Director, New Faculty Program
Professor
Modern Languages and Cultures Department
emerye@montclair.edu
973-655-4452
Office Location: Schmitt Hall 241J
Elizabeth Emery is Professor of French in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures where she teaches a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses related to French language and nineteenth-century European and American literature and culture. She received her M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in French from New York University.
Professor Emery has published books and articles related to the reception of medieval art, architecture, and literature in nineteenth and twentieth-century Europe and America. She serves as Book Review Coeditor of Nineteenth-Century French Studies, as a board member of the Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Association, and as a member of the Modern Language Association LLC 19th-century French forum executive committee.
Current research interests include early photojournalism, celebrity interviews, European and American writer house museums, the history of collecting, the nineteenth-century French interest in Chinese, Indian, and Japanese art, global food politics, and sustainability studies.
BRIAN ABRAMS
Associate Professor
Cali School of Music
abramsb@montclair.edu
973-655-3458
Office Location: Chapin Hall
BRIAN ABRAMS, PhD, MT-BC, LCAT, Analytical Music Therapist and Fellow of the Association for Music and Imagery, has been a music therapist since 1995, with experience across a wide range of clinical contexts. Prior to his current position at Montclair State University as Associate Professor of Music (2008-present) and Coordinator of Music Therapy (2010-present), he served on the faculty at Immaculata University (2004-2008) and Utah State University (2001-2004). He has published and presented internationally on a wide range of topics such as music therapy in cancer care, music psychotherapy, humanistic music therapy, and the interdisciplinary area of Health Humanities, including his role as one of five authors of a 2015 book by that title. He has also contributed to the establishment of several medical music therapy programs. He has served on the editorial boards of numerous journals, such as Music Therapy Perspectives, the Nordic Journal of Music Therapy and Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy. From 2005 to 2011, he served on the Board of the Mid-Atlantic Region of the American Music Therapy Association (AMTA), including as President from 2007-2009. From 2005 through the present, he has served on the AMTA Assembly of Delegates, including as Assembly Representative on the AMTA Board of Directors from 2010-2013, and as Assembly Speaker from 2012-2013.
MOUSUMI BOSE
Associate Professor
Nutrition and Food Studies Department
bosem@montclair.edu
973-655-3358
Office Location: University Hall 2154
MOUSUMI BOSE is an Associate Professor in the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies.
MOUSUMI BOSE is an Associate Professor in the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies at Montclair State University. Her primary research interests are in understanding the needs of communities affected by rare diseases. This includes conducting dietary assessments, determining the impact of rare diseases on overall quality of life, addressing healthcare disparities within the rare disease community, and evaluating caregiver burden. Dr. Bose has received multiple grants supporting her research, which has been published in multiple peer-reviewed journals including Cells, Journal of Child Neurology, Genetics in Medicine, Molecular Genetics and Metabolism, and MGM Reports.
RAM DUBEY
Associate Professor
Economics Department
dubeyr@montclair.edu
973-655-2126
Office Location: The Feliciano School of Business 538
RAM SEWAK DUBEY is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics. He received his PhD degree in economics from Cornell University and has been a faculty member at MSU since Fall, 2012. His teaching interests include undergraduate core and elective economics courses as well as core courses in the MBA program. He is an active researcher in the field of social choice and welfare with broad interest in the theoretical and empirical analysis of inequality in society. He has published in several esteemed research journals in economics. He has been a part of the New Faculty Program as a mentor for several years and is eagerly looking forward to meeting the new faculty members in the Fall semester.
PRIYA LALVANI
Professor
Teaching and Learning Department
lalvanip@montclair.edu
973-655-5372
Office Location: University Hall 3163
PRIYA LALVANI is a Full Professor in the department of Teaching and Learning. She received her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from The Graduate Center, CUNY and has been at MSU since Fall, 2010. She teaches courses in Disability Studies and is the coordinator for the graduate program in Inclusive Education. Her research is focused on examining disability as a sociopolitical construct. Through it, she seeks to disrupt ableism in society and to problematize the segregation of many students with disabilities in schools. She is the co-author of the book: Undoing Ableism: Teaching About Disability in K-12 Classrooms and the editor of: Constructing the (M)other: Narratives of Disability, Motherhood, and the Politics of Normal. She is excited to be a part of the New Faculty Program.
LAURA NICOSIA
Professor
English Department
nicosiala@montclair.edu
973-655-7326
Office Location: Dickson Hall 464
LAURA NICOSIA is a Professor in the English Department. She received her PhD in Literature from New York University and has been a faculty member at MSU since Fall 2004. Her scholarly interests include American literature, young adult and children’s literature, urban literature, narrative studies, social and collaborative networking, and popular culture. She has published nine edited collections in collaboration with her husband, one monograph, and has dozens of essays and chapters in top-tier publications. She is the NJ State Ambassador for the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents, serves as a Board of Trustee for the Boys & Girls Club (Clifton), has been a two-term president of the New Jersey Council of Teachers of English, and is a Public Scholar for the NJ Council for the Humanities. This is her first formal year as a mentor in the NFP though she has been informally mentoring and publishing new faculty for many years.
MICHELLE ZHU
Professor
School of Computing
zhumi@montclair.edu
973-655-4289
Office Location: Center for Computing and Information Science 327B
MICHELLE ZHU is a Professor and associate director for faculty and academic affairs for School of Computing at Montclair State University. Her research areas focus on parallel and distributed computing and big data system. She has published about 150 peer-reviewed articles in various journals and conferences. She received a total of over two million research grants from various agencies such as NSF, DOE, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.