By Kathy Henry Dowell

In touch economic times, Carolina is bolstering its scholarly excellence with strategic hiring of new faculty.

Even in an economic climate that has taken a toll on all levels of education, Carolina continues to focus on the future, particularly in selecting and recruiting some of the very best faculty members available.

The University’s professors have distinguished themselves well in recent years, winning awards for teaching excellence and garnering record levels of research funding, which further strengthens the teaching enterprise.

Still, Carolina is grappling with many of the same questions other employers face in an uncertain economy. How do you hire in an economic downturn? How do you invest now to ensure an outstanding faculty later? How can you replace retiring faculty while maintaining existing strengths in teaching and scholarship? In short, how do you stay competitive?

While the University has always been quite selective in recruiting its faculty, the current economic downturn has reduced the sheer number of professors being hired. Fortunately, two faculty recruitment programs—one of them now completed and the other in its final year—have brought scores of new faculty to campus in recent years to help replace a wave of retirements. Now the focus is on hand picking a select number of new scholars.

Here are a few of the new faces at Carolina—faculty members with excellent academic pedigrees, focused research and scholarly missions, and the drive that’s needed to enlighten and inspire our students.

When oboe-playing Peter Kolkay was in the eighth grade, the band director at his middle school decided the school needed a bassoon, a woodwind instrument that sounds like a male baritone voice.

Next, the director reasoned, the school needed a bassoonist.
“When he told me I would be playing the bassoon, I didn’t even know what one was,” Kolkay said. “It was clumsy to play at first, but it suits me: it’s a big instrument, and I’m tall.”

In fact, the bassoon suits Kolkay very well. He teaches music theory and bassoon as an assistant professor at Carolina and among his many performance awards are first prize in the 2002 Concert Artists Guild International Competition and in the 2001 William C. Byrd Competition—he is the first bassoonist to win both. In 2004, he received an Avery Fisher Career Grant. He has a master’s degree in music performance from the Eastman School of Music, and a Ph.D. in music from Yale University.

Kolkay is thoughtfully growing the bassoon program at Carolina. “There were only three bassoon students when I arrived,”
he said. “I want to build a good bassoon class with depth, and
I want to instill the love of all music in my students. To poke
buttons on a bassoon is a good skill to have, but at the end of
the day you need a balanced approach to be a well-rounded person.”

As an undergraduate at Arizona State University, Sheryl Wiskur discovered something about herself: she liked organic chemistry.

“It became like a second language for me,” she said, “and I found that I loved working in the lab.”

After earning a BS in chemistry in Tempe and then a Ph.D. at the University of Texas in Austin, Wiskur was completing a two-year postdoctoral post at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology when she was recruited by Carolina as a research assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Three years later, she added teaching to her responsibilities and was assigned her favorite subject: organic chemistry.

Wiskur’s research interests lie in synthetic organic methodology—the development of new organic reactions involving organocatalysis and physical organic and bioorganic sensors.

“We are designing and investigating new reactions that are catalyzed by small organic molecules,” she said. “The advantages of organocatalyzed reactions include eliminating trace metal contaminants and reducing costs.

“We also look for ways to more efficiently analyze the reactions we screen,” she said. “One way is the development of sensors for determination of enantiomeric excess. For example, if a pharmaceutical company came to us looking for a different way to synthesize a drug more efficiently, we would ask ourselves, ‘Can we help them with our sensors or our knowledge about sensors?’”

Students are an integral part of her research. Wiskur currently has five graduate students and two undergraduates working in her lab, using the department’s industry-standard nuclear magnetic resonance equipment. Last year, one of the students won a Magellan Scholarship, a prestigious grant given to undergraduates by the University to conduct faculty-mentored research.

“I get asked that a lot: how I went from a bachelor’s degree in mathematical science to a Ph.D. in library and information science,” said Ron Brown, assistant professor in the School of Library and Information Science.

“It is not so much of a switch as you might think,” said Brown, whose degrees come from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “The field and the profession are growing and changing. We work with many other professionals, including those in fields like computer science. We have graduates going to work at places like Yahoo and Google, as well as places like the National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health.”

As a child, Brown and his family regularly went to the public library in Lewisburg, N.C., where a federal aid program allowed them to check out a computer and take it home. He began to see the library as more than a place to get books.

Today, Brown is particularly interested in how educators search for and discover new sources of online video, and the role that library media specialists play in the management of online video resources.

He currently is teaching Design and Management of Databases, which he describes as “a databases course that is heavy on theory for non-technical people, although students will design a database during the course. We must be able to handle and organize all the new information we’re getting.”

Lucy Annang came to Carolina with research funding in hand from health research powerhouses such as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

“My research is, broadly, about women’s reproductive health, and women’s hygiene and how that might affect sexually transmitted disease transmission,” said Annang, an assistant professor in the Arnold School of Public Health. “I have worked primarily with college and high-school students, with a particular focus on African-American students.”

Annang began her career path as a pre-med undergraduate at Emory University, absorbing biology and clinical information in her classes. But her focus soon shifted.

“I realized I gravitated toward community-based work,” she said. “Medicine is more about the individual; public health is more of a broad population perspective that focuses on behavior and prevention.”

After completing a bachelor’s degree in psychology, Annang received an MPH in public health behavior and a Ph.D. in health education and promotion from the University of Alabama. Now a member of the Department of Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior at Carolina, Annang is also affiliated with the Arnold School’s Institute for HIV Prevention Leadership, which is funded largely by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“A lot of the research I do is community-based, and I deliver information to that community once we gather it,” she said. “I’m passionate about that: to let the members of the community know their participation is worthwhile and will help others. And teaching is a great way to funnel the research and knowledge gained back to students.”

Few dancers have Mila Parrish’s experience­—she was a dancer and choreographer in New York City, performing with modern, ballet, and theater companies. She co-owned a contemporary dance company.

Even fewer dancers have Parrish’s educational pedigree—BFA at University of Michigan, MA in dance education at Columbia University, Ph.D. in art education from Ohio State University. Her research and publications have established new trends in movement technology, K-12 integrated curriculum, and teacher training in the digital arena.

Such a rare combination makes Parrish a natural as an associate professor of dance and director of Carolina’s new dance education program.

“One of the great discoveries for me is that the Columbia area is such a rich dance community—there are numerous dance schools and regular performances,” said Parrish, who helped build a similar dance education program at Arizona State University.

“There is lots of growth in the dance arena, and public schools will need dance specialists,” she said. “Our program graduates will work in the public schools, teaching dance. They also may work in community centers, senior centers, or open their own dance studios.”

The program’s first graduate finished in May.