CofC Welcomes New Faculty for the 2021-22 Academic Year

With the 2021 fall semester here, it’s not just new students we’re seeing on campus – there are also some fresh faces in front of the classrooms, too.

“This year we have added an impressive cohort of new faculty members and we are so excited to welcome them to the College of Charleston,” says Suzanne Austin, provost and executive vice president of academic affairs. “It is essential to our students’ success to have/hire faculty members who are dedicated to excellence in teaching, mentoring and research, and I am confident our newest educators will enhance the academic experience of our students.”

Every year, the College hires new professors to ensure that its students are taught and mentored by the best educators and scholars from their respective fields. This semester’s new cohort of professors brings a wide array of academic specialties to the College, spanning the spectrum from developing video games to chaos theory to cultural management and Jim Crow policies, among many others.

“Each year, we aim to recruit a diverse class of new faculty members who are experts in their disciplines with a track record for dedication and innovation in the classroom and who have a passion for opening pathways and opportunities for our students,” says Deanna Caveny, associate provost for faculty affairs. “Our newest faculty colleagues offer that and much more to our campus community and are sure to provide engaging intellectual experiences for our students.”

Let’s meet a few of these new faculty members.

Hsin-Ching Wu

Hsin-Ching Wu is an assistant professor of arts management in the School of the Arts. Wu received her Ph.D. in public policy from the University of Massachusetts Boston (UMass Boston) and she is an American Society for Public Administration Founders’ Fellow for 2021. She holds master’s degrees in American studies and arts management from the University at Buffalo. Wu’s research focuses on the intersection of nonprofit arts and cultural management, public administration and policy, and social equity. She taught for many years in the Master of Public Administration Program at UMass Boston, where she advised students on their capstone projects. Wu also has experience in collection management in visual arts.

Mohamed Tazkarji (Photo: Donny J Crowe)

Mohamed Y. Tazkarji is an assistant professor in the Department of Supply Chain and Information Management. He comes to the College after earning his doctorate in computer information systems from Louisiana Tech University. His research interests include, but are not limited to, success and failure of information systems, health information technology and security and privacy of information systems.

DJ Polite

DJ Polite is a visiting assistant professor in the African American Studies program. He earned his bachelor’s degree in American studies from Williams College, a master’s in education from CUNY-Brooklyn College and his Ph.D. in history from the University of South Carolina. His research looks primarily on the mutually reinforcing growth of U.S. Jim Crow policies and empire in the Caribbean, particularly Puerto Rico. It explores the ways that the solidification of both relied on each other and cemented secondary citizenship status for African Americans, Puerto Ricans, and especially women of both groups.

Callie K. Phillips

Callie K. Phillips is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy. She completed her Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Notre Dame and her bachelor’s degree at the University of Kentucky. She works on topics in metaphysics, philosophy of language and philosophy of mind.

Chad S.A. Gibbs

Chad S.A. Gibbs joins the Yaschik/Arnold Jewish Studies Program this semester as an assistant professor and director of the Zucker/Goldberg Center for Holocaust Studies. Gibbs is a historian of the Holocaust, focusing on geographies and networks of Jewish Resistance. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, his master’s from the University of Nebraska at Omaha and his bachelor’s degree from the University of Wyoming. Prior to academic life, Gibbs served in the U.S. Army. He calls Wyoming home and is daily trying, and failing, to adjust to the Charleston humidity.

Sarah Schoemann

Sarah Schoemann is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science. She recently earned her doctorate from Georgia Tech’s Digital Media program with a minor in human computer interaction. While at Georgia Tech, Schoemann assisted with the research and development of a health game designed to help pediatric patients with sickle cell disease and diabetes learn more about the science behind their diseases to boost their health literacy and STEM knowledge. For her dissertation work, she collaborated with a local feminist bookstore to bring feminist video games to the store through a retro-style arcade cabinet featuring games by diverse designers and offering free workshops on creating your first video game. A New York City native, Schoemann earned her master’s at NYU Tandon School of Engineering in Brooklyn after receiving a BFA in studio art from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and Tufts University. Schoemann is excited to work with College of Charleston students on developing video games to tackle important social issues as well as on developing innovate wearable technologies that combine ordinary textiles with smart materials. You can find her in the new CAT Lab (Critical Art and Technology Lab) at Harbor Walk East, playing with the lab’s VR headsets or its custom embroidery machine.

Oscar Jerome Stewart

Oscar Jerome Stewart earned his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina Charlotte’s Interdisciplinary Organizational Science Program. He is an assistant professor of management in the School of Business. Previously, he was an assistant professor of sustainable business at San Francisco State University. Stewart has been recognized globally for his teaching innovation and as a scholar. He is concerned with power within organizations and power of organizations, and how to create more equitable and cooperative power structures that bind members together in a beneficent mutuality. Currently, Stewart is working on projects looking at corporate misconduct, discrimination in higher education and critical pedagogy. In his spare time, he loves to rehabilitate troubled dogs and can be seen traversing the Lowcountry with his two dogs, Sho Nuff the Shogun of the Lowcountry and Assata Shakur.

Aicko Yves Schumann

Aicko Yves Schumann is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physics from the University of Potsdam, Germany, and his Ph.D. in Physics from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. He has held postdoctoral appointments in the Complexity Science Group in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Calgary, the Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, and the Computational Neuroscience/Computer Vision Group in the Department of Neuroscience at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC). He has also been a visiting scholar at the University of California, San Diego, a research assistant professor and head of the data analytics and statistics unit in the Institute of Psychiatry at MUSC, and an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Physics at MUSC. His research areas are the physics of complex systems, network science, nonlinear dynamics, chaos theory, data science and statistics. Schumann is an avid cyclist, hiker and globetrotter.

Discover more new faculty members on the Academic Affairs webpage.