Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences is home to an exceptional faculty across seven academic departments and a wide range of interdisciplinary programs. Their commitment to innovative teaching, groundbreaking research, and meaningful public engagement ensures that the arts, humanities, and social sciences remain central to every student’s education. This spring, we proudly recognize the following faculty members for their promotions, honors, and awards. Congratulations to all on an outstanding academic year!

Faculty Tenure and/or Promotion

The following faculty were reviewed by their peers and administrators during 2025-2026 and were awarded tenure and/or promotion, effective at the beginning of the 2026-2027 academic year.

2025-2026 Wilkinson Scholarly Creative Grant 

2025-2026 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.

Wang-Fradkin Professorships:

Co-Teaching Awards:

SOARS Awards: (Supporting Open Access Research and Scholarship)

2026-27 Sabbatical and Development Leave Awards

  • Morgan Read-Davidson (English) will dedicate his development leave award to creating a new course, ENG 284: Fundamentals in Creative Writing and a Guide to Generative AI for Writing Programs, to ensure ethical and appropriate use of new technologies.
  • Samantha Dressel (English) will devote her developmental leave award to developing the scholarly expertise necessary to craft a new course, “Once and Future Knights,” and to researching innovative pedagogical practices in the field.
  • Ruben Espinoza (LatinX and Latin American Studies) will use his developmental leave award to develop two new courses for the LatinX and Latin American Studies minor, one focused on Chicano Studies and the other on Latinx music.
  • Jeff Koerber (History) will use his sabbatical leave award to further his second monograph project, focusing on the Soviet Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee’s role in globally disseminating news reports about the Holocaust during World War II, a project that capitalizes on his linguistic proficiency in Yiddish and Russian.
  • Ashley Kranjac (Sociology) will use her sabbatical leave award to research implicit social attitudes towards different faith groups as revealed in spontaneous helping behavior in everyday settings using the lost-letter technique (LLT) method, with the goal of producing four journal articles from the data.
  • Stephanie Takaragawa (Sociology) will use her sabbatical leave award to develop a monograph or series of articles on wartime propaganda, popular culture, and the lived experiences of Japanese Americans during World War II, with a particular focus on the visual material culture produced in and about the incarceration camps.