The outstanding faculty in Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences’ eight academic departments and numerous interdisciplinary programs support innovative curriculum, cutting-edge research, and public programming to ensure that the arts, humanities, and social sciences remain a distinguishing component in every student’s education. This spring, the Wilkinson College faculty listed below were recognized with promotions, honors, and awards. Congratulations to all our faculty for an amazing academic year!

Faculty Tenure and/or Promotion

The following faculty have been reviewed by their peers and administrators during 2024-2025 and have been awarded tenure and/or promotion effective at the beginning of the 2025-2026 academic year.

Lia Halloran
Promoted to Full Professor of Art

Morgan Read-Davidson
Promoted to Instructional Associate Professor of English

2024-2025 Unit Faculty Excellence Award

Unit Faculty Awards are peer recognition of exceptional contributions in the areas of teaching and/or scholarly/creative activity and/or service to the university. A $1,000 award accompanies this recognition by faculty colleagues.

2025-2026 On-Campus Conference/Workshop Award

2025-26 Sabbatical and Development Leave Awards

Professor Lia Halloran, Professor, Art

Professor Lia Halloran (Art) has been awarded a Sabbatical Award during the 2025-2026 academic year. Professor Halloran will utilize the sabbatical for two projects, one short-term and one long-term. In the short-term, Lia has been invited to perform at the Royal Albert Hall in London, a 2026 performance that will serve as the culmination of a collaboration with composer Rick Wakeman to create a musical score and animation of her 2024 co-authored book with Nobel Laureate Kip Thorne, The Warped Side of Our Universe: An Odyssey through Black Holes, Wormholes, Time Travel, and Gravitational Waves. The book has been translated into Italian, French, Russian, and Chinese, and Professor Halloran created over 660 paintings for the project. In the long-term, The Huntington Library and Art Museum in Pasadena has offered her a future solo show for which she will create a new large-scale project that includes 118 unique artworks. She plans to devote part of her leave to conducting the research necessary to complete a piece that recreates the structure of the periodic table of elements, emphasizing the overlooked contribution of women, queer, and marginalized communities, especially those from Southern California.

Dr. Susan Paterno, Professor, English

Dr. Susan Paterno (English) has been awarded the One-Year Scholarly and Creative Activities Release Award during the 2025-2026 academic year. Dr. Paterno will use the one-year scholarly and creative activity sabbatical to work on a comprehensive biography of James Gordon Bennett Jr., which is under contract with St. Martin’s Press. The proposed project aims to write a seminal biography on Bennett, a complex and controversial figure whose legacy in journalism endures to this day. Based on extensive research and analysis of newly discovered sources, Dr. Paterno’s project will provide a comprehensive account of Bennett’s life. The project will produce a detailed and well-researched biography of Bennett, examining his extravagant lifestyle, his impact on journalism, and his tumultuous personal life. The book will cover key aspects of Bennett’s life, including his rise to prominence, the scandals that marked his career, his advancements in the field of journalism, his pioneering of the adventure sports industry, and his use of emerging technologies to build a media empire that became the largest in the world. The project will also involve interviews with Bennett’s only living family member and historians.