(Aug. 17, 2017) — UTSA will begin a new academic year with more than 30 new assistant, associate and full professors joining its ranks. The new faculty members bring their talent from a host of prestigious institutions from around the nation and world.
Unique to this year’s faculty cohort is that it includes five new department chairs: James Bray in Psychology; Eric Brey in Biomedical Engineering; David Dampier in Information Systems and Cyber Security; Michael Smith in Criminal Justice; and Tulio Sulbaran in Construction Science.
“Just as UTSA is a first-choice university for bright students, we continue to recruit and attract both promising and accomplished scholars who are equally excited about becoming Roadrunners,” said C. Mauli Agrawal, interim provost and vice president for academic affairs. “I am very impressed with this new cohort of faculty and am delighted to welcome them to UTSA.”
The new faculty members chose UTSA for a variety of reasons:
“UTSA has excellent infrastructure, especially in my research field, nanotechnology,” said Mahmoud Abdelwahed, who joined the UTSA Department of Biomedical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology. “The university offers great opportunities for collaboration with expert researchers and scientific industry.”
“I have chosen to come to UTSA for the diversity of the campus and community and the national reputation of the university and program,” said David Nguyen, who joined the UTSA Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies from a tenure-track position at the University of North Dakota.
UTSA accounting alumus Juan Manuel Sanchez ’06 chose to return to his alma mater from an endowed professorship at Texas Tech University. “I want to be a part of UTSA’s exciting and bright future…history in the making,” he said.
“I want to be a part of a growing institution. I felt my research and enthusiasm for physics would have the most impact at UTSA,” said Elizabeth Sooby Wood, who joined the UTSA Department of Physics and Astronomy from a postdoctoral fellowship with Los Alamos National Laboratory.
This year’s new faculty members come from institutions such as Baylor College of Medicine, Columbia University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Johns Hopkins University, Rice University, the University of Texas at Austin, Cairo University in Egypt, the University of British Columbia in Canada, and Vindico Pharmaceuticals in Spain.
UTSA has more than 1,400 faculty members overall. In addition to welcoming its new faculty, UTSA will welcome more than 8,000 new students at the start of the 2017-2018 academic year.
UTSA is ranked among the top 400 universities in the world and among the top 100 in the nation, according to Times Higher Education.
