Introducing New Faculty

Rutgers University–Camden Chancellor Antonio D. Tillis is pleased to extend a warm welcome from the entire Rutgers–Camden community to the 18 educators and scholars joining the faculty. Each of Rutgers–Camden’s four schools has multiple representatives in this year’s class of new faculty. These individuals have become part of the Rutgers–Camden faculty following highly competitive selection processes, demonstrating exceptional standards of scholarship, research, and professional experience.

“This year’s new faculty cohort represents a vastly diverse range of identities, backgrounds, perspectives, and areas of interest,” Chancellor Tillis said. “Through their intellectual curiosity and outstanding quality of work, they have proven they belong at our university, and I wish them immeasurable success on their Rutgers–Camden journeys.”

Faculty of Arts and
Sciences–Camden

John Griffin
Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences

John Griffin is the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers–Camden. He received his doctorate and master’s degrees in physiology from The Ohio State University and his bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of North Carolina Wilmington. In his previous position as senior associate provost at Clemson University, Griffin played a collaborative role in the development and implementation of the ClemsonForward strategic plan, which includes several key initiatives focused on increasing diversity and inclusion across the campus. He also spearheaded initiatives that resulted in the reclassification of the university from Carnegie R2 to R1, worked with department chairs to develop curricular pathways that support transfer-student success and access to accelerated degree programs, led the creation of the Clemson Summer Start Program, and reaffirmed the university’s commitment to academic excellence and community engagement.

Valerie Adams-Bass
Assistant Professor

Valerie Adams-Bass is an assistant professor in the Department of Childhood Studies. She earned her doctorate in interdisciplinary studies from the University of Pennsylvania and her master’s degree in urban education from Temple University. Her research examines how race influences the identity development process, socialization, and academic outcomes of Black children and youth. She is especially interested in how Black adolescents interpret negative media stereotypes and whether the messages presented are internalized or buffered as a result of racial socialization experiences. Adams-Bass has lived and taught in Namibia as a volunteer teacher and served as a Rotary Ambassador Scholar in South Africa, where she participated in a community-based research project with South African youth. She has presented at numerous professional conferences and regularly trains youth development professionals to use culturally relevant practices when working with Black children and youth.

Brian Corbett
Assistant Professor

Brian Corbett is an assistant professor in the Department of Biology. He earned his doctorate in neuroscience from Thomas Jefferson University and his bachelor’s degree in biology from The College of New Jersey. His doctorate work at the focused on how seizure-induced epigenetic mechanisms contribute to memory deficits in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease. Upon graduating he joined the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where he studied the neural networks and molecular mechanisms underlying stress resilience and habituation. For a separate project, Corbett studied how plasticity-related genes and neural circuits regulate stress habituation, the process by which the stress response diminishes following subsequent exposures to the same stressor.

Eveling Hondros
Assistant Teaching Professor

Eveling Hondros is an assistant teaching professor in the Department of World Languages and Cultures. She received her master’s degree in teaching Spanish and her bachelor’s degree in Spanish from Rutgers–Camden, where she has served as a lecturer since 2015. She is a certified “trainer of trainers” for The Community Interpreter and is the coordinator of the Spanish for the health professions certificate program at Rutgers–Camden.

Hunter King
Assistant Professor

Hunter King is an assistant professor in the Department of Physics. He holds a doctorate in physics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a master’s degree in physics from Bogazici University in Istanbul, and a bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His research utilizes physics to answer questions related to the evolution of organisms and investigates diverse subjects including the granular physics of bird nests, fluid dynamics of biological fog capture, thermodynamics of sorbent-based vapor harvesting, and dynamics of adhesive underwater contact between soft bodies. He uses optical and mechanical instrumentation and pointed table-top experiments, and collaborates with theory and computation groups, as well as biologists and architects, to approach these interdisciplinary problems. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Harvard Magazine, Science, Business Insider, and more.

Randy Mershon
Assistant Professor

Randy Mershon is an assistant professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences. He earned his master’s and bachelor’s degrees in mathematics from Rutgers–Camden. His research focuses on mathematics education, and he returned to Rutgers–Camden in 2019 to serve as a teaching instructor for the Department of Mathematical Sciences.

Nathaniel Wright
Assistant Professor

Nathaniel Wright is an associate professor in the Department of Policy and Public Administration. He received his doctorate in public administration from the University of Kansas and his master’s and bachelor’s degrees in public administration from Binghamton University. His research portfolio is a diverse nexus of social science and urban studies research, with emphasis on community-based nonprofit organizations and sustainable development. His research centers on the role that social advocacy organizations play in creating sustainable neighborhoods and on issues related to nonprofit performance and accountability. Wright’s work has appeared in leading nonprofit and urban journals such as Nonprofit Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Journal of Urban Affairs, American Review of Public Administration, and Sustainability. He is also coeditor of a book titled “Performance and Public Value in the Hollow State: Assessing Government–Nonprofit Partnerships.”

School of Nursing–Camden

Lisa Lewis
Professor
Senior Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Lisa Lewis is a professor and senior associate dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion at the School of Nursing–Camden. She earned her doctorate in nursing from the University of Missouri-Columbia, her master’s degree in nursing education from New York University, and her bachelor’s degree in nursing from Syracuse University. An expert in cardiovascular health disparities, she conducts research that lies at the intersection of complex sociocultural factors, treatment adherence, and culturally relevant and gender-appropriate self-management interventions for hypertensive Blacks. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing and the American Heart Association as well as a recipient of the 2019 Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching at the University of Pennsylvania.

Joseph Tariman
Associate Professor
Associate Dean for Clinical Innovation and Evidence-Based Practice

Joseph Tariman is an associate professor and associate dean for clinical innovation and evidence-based practice at the School of Nursing–Camden. He received his doctorate in nursing science from the University of Washington, his master’s degree in business administration from DePaul University, his master’s degree in nursing from Cebu Doctors’ University, and his bachelor’s degree in nursing from the University of the Visayas. Tariman specializes in myeloma patient care, and his research centers on quality-of-life issues, hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, clinical drug trials, novel therapies, management of treatment-related side effects, cancer survivorship, health maintenance, cancer treatment decision-making, and treatment outcomes measurement. He has an extensive portfolio of publications, lectures, and presentations on myeloma-related topics.

Deirdre Conroy
Assistant Teaching Professor

Deirdre Conroy is an assistant teaching professor in the School of Nursing–Camden. She holds a doctorate in nursing practice from Rutgers–Camden, master’s and bachelor’s degrees in nursing from Stockton University, and an associate’s degree in nursing from Cumberland County College. Conroy’s academic interests include teaching and learning for nurses, clinical practices of the advanced practice nurse, and transitioning students to professional practice. Her doctorate work focused on educating providers on evidence-based practices in caring for high-risk, underserved populations. She has over 30 years of experience as a nurse practitioner and educator with clinical expertise in community healthcare.

Thomas Dahan
Assistant Teaching Professor

Thomas Dahan is an assistant teaching professor in the School of Nursing–Camden. He earned his doctorate in public affairs from Rutgers–Camden and his master’s degree in teaching, learning and curriculum from Drexel University. His research interests include higher education service-learning and civic engagement as well as college student success. Since 2019, he has served as the treasurer of the American Educational Research Association’s Special Interest Group for Community Engagement and Experiential Learning. Previously, he was the chair of the New Jersey Association for Institutional Research.

Margaret Gray
Associate Teaching Professor

Margaret Gray is an associate teaching professor in the School of Nursing–Camden. She received her doctorate in education from the University of Alabama, her master’s degree in nursing from Stockton University, her master’s degree in education from Georgian Court University, and her bachelor’s degree in nursing from the University of Delaware. She is certified as an advanced practice nurse, family nurse practitioner, school nurse, and substance awareness coordinator. An expert in pediatrics and gerontology, Gray has presented her research at professional conferences across the state and country. She has over 15 years of primary-care experience in the southern Ocean County region and maintains an active clinical practice.

School of Business–Camden

Can Kucukgul
Assistant Professor of Management

Can Kucukgul is an assistant professor of management at Rutgers School of Business–Camden. He received his doctorate in operations management from the University of Texas at Dallas and his master’s degree in industrial engineering and his bachelor’s degree in computer science from Sabanci University. His research lies at the intersection of operations management and marketing, with a particular focus on revenue management applications of online platforms. He is also interested in solving practically relevant problems with consumer privacy concerns. Kucukgul’s research has been published in Management Science. In 2020, he was selected as the Best Ph.D. Student Teacher in the Jindal School of Management at the University of Texas at Dallas.

Tengfei Zhang
Assistant Professor

Tengfei Zhang is an assistant professor of finance in the School of Business–Camden. He received his doctorate in finance from Louisiana State University and his master’s degree in economics as well as his bachelor’s degree in management from Nanjing Agricultural University. His areas of research include empirical asset pricing, machine learning in finance, corporate culture, ESG, analysts, and financial technology. His research has been published in Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and he served as a postdoctoral research associate in the Centre for Endowment Asset Management at the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge.

Rutgers Law School

Leonore Carpenter
Assistant Professor

Leonore (Lee) Carpenter is an associate professor at Rutgers Law School in Camden. She earned her juris doctorate from the Temple University Beasley School of Law and her bachelor’s degree in American studies from Rutgers University–New Brunswick. Her research—published in outlets such as Georgetown Law Journal and The Journal of Law and Social Change—primarily focuses on the role lawyers can play in creating meaningful social change, exploring legal ethics, public-interest lawyering, and social movements. She is the recipient of the 2018 Philadelphia Bar Association’s Cheryl Ingram Advocate for Justice Award and was included on the National LGBTQ+ Bar Association’s Best LGBTQ+ Attorneys Under 40 list in 2012.

Andrea Johnson
Visiting Assistant Professor of Law

Andrea Johnson is a visiting assistant professor at Rutgers Law School in Camden. She holds a juris doctorate from West Virginia University and a bachelor’s degree in business management from Marshall University. Johnson’s scholarship and teaching interests center on discrimination, bias, and identity, and how their intersections create legal barriers to compliance with civil rights and employment discrimination law. Her research focuses on ways in which individuals’ legal rights are impacted by society’s understanding of changing demographics, particularly culture’s conceptualization of race, ethnicity, “invisible” disability, gender, and sexual orientation. She joins Rutgers Law from West Virginia University College of Law, where she served as the inaugural fellow of the Fitzsimmons Center for Litigation and Advocacy. She also brings practice experience in workplace discrimination and civil rights litigation, as well as experience teaching legal analysis and writing.

Elenore Wade
Assistant Professor

Elenore Wade is an assistant professor at Rutgers Law School in Camden. She holds a juris doctorate from The George Washington University Law School. She joined Rutgers Law from the George Washington University Law School, where she was a visiting associate professor and Friedman Fellow in the Prisoner & Reentry Clinic, an intensive litigation clinic where students write and argue motions on behalf of prisoners seeking early release after decades of incarceration. While at George Washington, she also helped develop and teach in a racial justice reading group taught by the clinical faculty. She has prior experience as a staff attorney and Equal Justice Works Fellow at Bread for the City in Washington, D.C., where she focused on healthcare and welfare rights.

Margaret Zhang
Visiting Assistant Professor
Equity & Inclusion Fellow

Margaret Zhang is a visiting assistant professor and an equity and inclusion fellow at Rutgers Law School in Camden. She earned her juris doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and a bachelor’s degree in piano performance from the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on best practices for representing and advising employment and education discrimination plaintiffs, with a focus on pregnancy, parenting, and disability. Zhang previously served as the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School’s interim associate director for equity and inclusion. She also advocated for pregnant and parenting people with the Women’s Law Project in Philadelphia, where she specialized in advancing and protecting pregnancy and lactation rights through individual client counseling and representation, policy advocacy, and community education.

About Rutgers Camden

Part of the Rutgers University system since 1950, Rutgers–Camden is home to over 4,800 undergraduates, 1,700 graduate students, and 850 faculty members. Just across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, the university offers the Rutgers experience, tradition, and prestige in a community-focused, close-knit environment.

Rutgers–Camden holds the prestigious R2 designation for high levels of research activity and was named a Minority-Serving institution by the U.S. Department of Education. In addition to the College of Arts & Science, the university’s vibrant urban campus houses the Rutgers Law School–Camden, Rutgers School of Nursing–Camden, and Rutgers School of Business–Camden.

With over 55,000 alumni across all 50 states and six continents, Rutgers–Camden is a leading driver of educational opportunity and community engagement throughout the South Jersey and Delaware Valley regions. With a focus on serving area students and a vast network of world-renowned faculty and alumni, Rutgers–Camden is uniquely positioned to make local impact while achieving global reach.

^{Creative Design: Karaamat Abdullah}

Rutgers University–Camden Welcomes 18 New Faculty for 2022-23 Academic Year