Coastal Carolina welcomes 25 new faculty members
E. Craig Wall Sr. College of Business Administration
John N. Davis joins the Wall College of Business faculty as an assistant professor of management. Davis will be teaching in the areas of organizational behavior and strategic management. He earned a bachelor's degree from the United States Military Academy; a master's degree in business administration from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; and a Ph.D. in management and leadership from Texas Tech University. Davis spent 18 years as an engineer with the Campbell Soup Company. His research interests are in the areas of leadership and entrepreneurial management.
Lynn K. Griffin is a visiting assistant professor of accounting. She earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics from West Chester State University of Pennsylvania, a master's degree in psychology from N. C. State University, and a Ph.D. in accounting from the University of South Carolina. Griffin is currently on a leave of absence from N.C. A&T State University, where she has held a faculty position since 1989. Prior to joining the faculty there, she was on the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Griffin is teaching in the areas of financial and managerial accounting.
P. Richard Martin is an assistant professor of management. He holds a bachelor's degree in industrial technology from Western Carolina University, a master's degree in industrial education from Western Carolina, and both a master's and Ph.D. in industrial management from Clemson University. He spent more than 25 years in industry, including several extensive international assignments. Martin is teaching in the areas of management information systems and production/operations management. His current research deals with issues related to integrating information systems and supply chain networks.
Ronald R. Socha is an assistant professor of marketing. He holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and a master's degree in business administration from the University of Massachusetts, and is expected to complete his Ph.D. studies in marketing from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale this summer. Socha has held a variety of senior level marketing positions in the health care and banking industries and has taught at the University of Southern Indiana and the University of North Florida. His research interests include service marketing, business-to-business marketing, and marketing for small businesses. Socha is teaching marketing principles and consumer behavior.
Yoav Wachsman is an assistant professor of economics and statistics. He holds a bachelor's degree in economics from Salisbury State University and both a master's degree and Ph.D. in economics from the University of Hawaii. Wachsman's areas of expertise are applied microeconomics and game theory, natural resource economics and public enterprise. Additional areas of interest include the economics of leisure and tourism, international trade and health economics. He is teaching in the areas of macro and microeconomics and business statistics.
College of Education
Richard Costner is an assistant professor of elementary education. He recently completed his Ph.D. degree in curriculum and teaching from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He earned a bachelor's degree in recreation program and a master's degree in middle grades education and management from Appalachian State University. He taught language arts and English in North Carolina for five years. His research explores how a professional learning community can lead teachers to deeper understandings of their classroom practice.
Donald L. Rockey Jr. is an assistant professor in recreation and leisure management. He earned his bachelor's in physical education and a Ph.D. degree in recreation and leisure management from the University of Mississippi, and an M.A.T. in physical education from the University of North Carolina. Rocky comes to Coastal from Shepherd College (W.Va.), where his teaching and research emphasis focused on recreation, park and sport tourism principles, and gambling patterns of college students and student-athletes.
Sherer Royce joined the faculty in January as assistant professor of health promotion. She is completing her Ph.D. in public health at USC. Her areas of expertise and community practice are tobacco use prevention, physical activity, and teen pregnancy prevention. At USC, she was the project coordinator for a statewide youth empowerment/tobacco control program evaluation study.
Sophia Tan is an assistant professor of educational technology, teaching both undergraduate and master's level technology classes. She earned a bachelor's degree in linguistics and economics for the National University of Singapore. She recently earned a Ph.D. degree in educational technology at Michigan State University, where she also earned a master's degree in teaching English to speakers of other languages and computer assisted language learning. She also has a post-grad diploma of education in teaching secondary level language arts and mathematics from the National Institute of Education at Nanyang Technological University. Tan has experience with K-12 teaching, distance learning and assisting faculty in the public schools and university in utilizing technology.
Thomas W. and Robin W. Edwards College of Humanities and Fine Arts
Janice A. Cannan is an instructor of political science and director of instructional services. She earned a bachelor's degree in political science from Coastal and a J.D. from the University of South Carolina Law School. Cannan will develop and coordinate the instructional resources for all off-campus classes at the higher education centers.
Patti Edwards is an assistant professor of music. She earned a master's degree in music from the St. Louis Conservatory of Music and is a D.M.A. candidate at the University of North Texas. Edwards taught voice, vocal pedagogy, song literature, music appreciation and music history at Bemidji State University in Bemidji, Minn. A native of Georgetown, she is a professional singer who performs in opera, oratorio, concert and chamber works.
Arne Flaten is an assistant professor of art history with a Ph.D. from Indiana University. Flaten, whose teaching specialty is the Italian Renaissance, comes to Coastal from Virginia Tech, where he was a visiting assistant professor. His research concentrates on the relationships between humanism, portraiture and the production of art in 15th and 16th century Italy. His publication of "The Middeldorf Collection: Medals and Plaquettes" is expected during this academic year.
Eliza Glaze is an assistant professor of history with a Ph.D. from Duke University. Glaze, whose teaching specialty is medieval history, was previously at the College of Charleston, where she was a visiting assistant professor. She is working on two books: "Hildegard of Bingen's Causes and Cures" and "Medicine from Antiquity to the Age of Printing."
Sage Graham is as assistant professor of English with a Ph.D. from Georgetown University. Graham, whose teaching specialty is socio-linguistics, is from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Her most recent research is "Cooperation, Conflict and Community in Computer-Mediated Communication," examining the impact of technology on identity construction and the negotiation and resolution of conflict.
Doris Guay is a visiting associate professor of art education. She earned a Ph.D. from Ohio State University. Guay is from Kent State University, where she served as art education division coordinator. She has a text proposal that has been accepted for publication by the National Art Education Association.
William Hippis an assistant professor of art and art gallery director with a master's degree from the University of Georgia. Hipp comes from the Maryland Institute College of Art, where he was director of exhibitions. He was also executive director of the Bolinas Museum of Marin County, Calif., and executive director and curator of Angels Gate Cultural Center for the Visual & Performing Arts in Los Angeles, Calif.
Lisa Johnson is an assistant professor of English with a Ph.D. from Binghamton University. Johnson, whose teaching specialty is cultural studies, women's writing and creative nonfiction, is from Lenoir-Rhyne College in Hickory, N.C., where she was a visiting assistant professor.
Greg London is an assistant professor of theater. He earned a master's degree in fine arts from Arizona State University. He has worked as a teaching associate in Coastal's Department of Performing Arts department for the past year. London has taught classes and workshops in Shakespeare, contemporary acting, voice, movement, directing, musical theater, audition techniques and dialects at universities and theater companies across America as well as the U.K.
Pamela Burke Martin is an assistant professor of politics. She has a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland. Martin, whose teaching specialty is comparative politics and international relations with an emphasis on globalization and the developing world, previously taught at Georgetown High School and at Coastal. Her book, "The Globalization of Contentious Politics: The Amazonian Indigenous Rights Movement," was published earlier this year.
Kurry Seymour is an assistant director of bands. He earned a master's degree from West Virginia University, where he was a graduate assistant in percussion and conducted the pep and concert bands. He was the percussion composer/arranger and cast member for a touring company of "Macbeth" in Germany in 2000.
Shannon Stewart is an assistant professor of English and director of freshman English. She is expected to earn a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro this summer. Stewart, whose teaching specialty is composition and rhetoric, is from High Point University in High Point, N.C., where she was a lecturer.
Maria Luisa Torres is an assistant professor of Spanish. She is expected to earn a Ph.D. from Purdue University this summer. Torres, whose teaching specialties are contemporary Spanish American literature and culture, 19th century Spanish American narrative, and Andean literatures and cultures, was a teaching assistant at Purdue before joining the Coastal faculty.
College of Natural and Applied Sciences
Menassie Ephrem is an assistant professor of mathematics and statistics. He earned a Ph.D. from Arizona State University, and his dissertation research focused on operator algebras. Ephrem has collaborated with researchers at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and Northern Arizona University. He will expand the course offerings for math majors as well as teach foundational math classes.
Andrew Incognito is an assistant professor of mathematics and statistics who taught in Coastal's math department last year. Incognito earned a Ph.D. degree from Temple University in the field of harmonic analysis. His research has been on Riesz Transforms and Singular Integral Operators. He will teach introductory and advanced courses for mathematics majors.
Robert Peterson is a developmental biologist who will teach courses in cell and developmental biology for the department of biology. He earned a Ph.D. from the University of Florida and did postdoctoral research at Duke University. His most recent research focuses on gene expression and cell interaction during the development of sea urchins, and cell differentiation in zebrafish.