Faculty Stars Align Through Hiring Constellation
New faculty members fill strategic roles as hiring constellation takes form.
Photo by Steven Bridges/University of Tennessee
Faculty members joining the college in fall 2025 bring new, interdisciplinary perspectives in a variety of academic fields, research topics, and creative activity. Some of these new faculty faces arrive as part of a strategic hiring constellation: “Envisioning and Narrating Emerging Futures.” The coordinated hiring is designed to enhance forward-looking opportunities for student success while furthering the university’s research mission to make life and lives better for Tennesseans and beyond.
“Faculty members within this constellation bring multidisciplinary expertise that enhances career readiness in emerging new fields for our students,” said Professor Liem Tran, associate dean for academic programs. “They further strengthen the College of Arts and Sciences advantage throughout the range of classes they offer.”
The addition of these new colleagues also further expands the college’s wide range of research opportunities for graduate-level students.
“These faculty expand the range of possibilities for collaborative research and scholarship across the college in several key areas of strength and expertise,” said Professor Mike Blum, associate dean for research and creative activity.
Every student’s educational path is unique, and these new faculty will offer new courses, research experiences, and mentorship that will help prepare students to graduate as “T-shaped professionals”—when graduates have both expertise in their chosen field and the versatility to collaborate across many fields. Their skill sets and experience will be both deep and wide, something potential employers look for.
“Each of our students has a unique combination of personal and professional interests,” said Interim Executive Dean Robert Hinde. “Hiring faculty with wide-ranging, interdisciplinary expertise helps the college provide students with a next-level educational experience that prepares them for success throughout their careers.”
New Faculty for Envisioning and Narrating Emerging Futures
Roles in this constellation include helping develop academic studies in innovative discoveries that change the world for the better, putting knowledge and skills into practice to help people understand rapid global, social, and technological changes and find authentic paths to positive change.
The faculty members’ areas of expertise will also better prepare UT students for emerging career roles in visual storytelling and content-creation that are vital to Tennessee’s growing gaming and motion picture industries.
“This constellation applies the capabilities of creative work in the arts with the scholarly perspective of the humanities to help us to reveal what our future world could be,” said Divisional Dean for Arts and Humanities Beauvais Lyons. “Some of this work can employ digital forms, or seek to engage with the public more broadly, but it will often involve a collaborative approach. There are so many potential collaborations and synergies across the work done by these new faculty—which will also connect them to faculty already in the college.”
- Brandee Easter, Assistant Professor of Digital and New Media, Department of English; research on relationships between the body and technology, exploring creative programming languages that test the boundaries of computational expression.
- Bucky Miller, Assistant Professor of Photography, School of Art; photography that unearths “stranger possibilities for joy,” works that examine the “dueling forces of extreme presence and imaginative escape.”
- Rachel Schneider, Assistant Professor of Religion in Public Life, Department of Religious Studies; research focuses on how religion can undergird systems of inequality, but also how religion and spirituality can shape ethical practices and social change.
- Daniel Bird Tobin, Assistant Professor of Applied Theatre, Department of Theatre; communicating science and building theatrical stories from artifacts uncovered through life and experiences.
- Zoe Weldon-Yochim, Assistant Professor of Art History/Museum Studies, School of Art; research examines how visual and material culture engages the intertwined histories of nuclear colonialism, ecological violence, and US militarism.
- Jessica Wilkerson, Associate Professor of Public History –Appalachia, Department of History; research and teaching on political economy and social change in the 20th-century South and Appalachia, from women in country music and sports to histories of labor organizing in Appalachia.
Next Constellation: Societal Resilience to Climate Change
With the success of this first hiring constellation, the college now seeks faculty to be part of another one, Societal Resilience to Climate Change, planned for launch in fall 2026. New faculty in this constellation will expand on existing strengths in areas that help communities develop better preparedness for challenges like disasters brought on by extreme weather events. This focus connects with existing UT-wide initiatives on human health and wellness, circular bioeconomy, and global energy ecosystems.
By Randall Brown