Faculty Fellows
Appalachian’s administration is strongly committed to diversity, offering strong support to various initiatives. Students learn best in diverse educational environments; therefore, central to the depth and quality of intellectual life at Appalachian is recruiting and retaining a diverse faculty. A diverse faculty attracts a diverse student body, thus enriching all learning, working, and social interactions and preparing students to thrive in an increasingly diverse world. One significant step that Appalachian took to recruit and retain a more diverse was instating the Faculty Fellows Program, first introduced in 1993, but formally launched in a campus-wide initiative in 2002, in conjunction with the establishment of the Office of Diversity (now the Office of Equity, Diversity and Compliance).
Current Faculty Fellows
E. Ike Udogu
E. Ike Udogu is a full professor in the Department of Government and Justice Studies. He earned his BA in political science from Appalachian State University and both the M.A. and Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.
Dr. Udogu joined the faculty of Government and Justice Studies as a faculty fellow in 2003. He teaches international relations and comparative politics with special emphasis in international relations and African politics.
Since joining the faculty, he has published several books, book chapters, book reviews and articles. He has also co-authored works with graduate students in the department.
Dr. Udogu is the recipient of several athletics and scholarly awards including, but not limited to, NCAA All-American soccer player; Inductee, Appalachian State University Hall of Fame; Who’s Who in American Education; National Endowment for the Humanities; 2000 Outstanding Scholars of the 21st Century Award.
He is the former president of the Association of Third World Studies, Inc.
Calvin Hall
Calvin L. Hall is an assistant professor and faculty fellow in the Department of Communication at Appalachian State University. He earned his doctorate in mass communication from UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication. His research interests include the function of mass communication in society in the areas of race, class, gender, and culture. Other research interests include literary journalism, journalism history, journalism biography, and scholastic journalism. He currently teaches introductory journalism, editing, and minorities in mass communication courses at Appalachian State.
Born and raised in Asheville, N.C., Hall holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English from N.C. State University. He taught English and journalism at Asheville High School. Hall also served as director of student publications and a faculty member at St. Augustine’s College in Raleigh, N.C., and also serves as an instructor for the Summer Scholastic Journalism Institute of the North Carolina Scholastic Media Association (NCSMA), headquartered at UNC-Chapel Hill.
He has had work published in The Journal of Communication Studies andthe Encyclopedia of American Journalism. Hall has had book reviews published in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly and at H-Net.org. His credits as reviewer include American Journalism, the journal of the American Journalism Historians Association(AJHA), and the Association for Educators in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC).
In 2005, Hall participated as a fellow in the Institute for Journalism Excellence, a program sponsored by the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The purpose of the program was to strengthen ties between journalism educators and newspaper editors by having university faculty work in newsrooms during the summer.
In 2008, Hall was elected to a second term as a member of the board of the North Carolina Humanities Council. He is also a member of AJHA, AEJMC, the International Association for and Literary Journalism Studies (IALJS).
Hall is currently working on a book analyzing selected memoirs written by African American journalists, which is scheduled to be published sometime in 2009 by The Scarecrow Press.
Rachel S. Shinnar
Rachel S. Shinnar became a faculty fellow and an assistant professor at Appalachian State University's Walker College of Business Department of Management in 2004. She holds Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in hotel administration from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) and a bachelor’s degree in French literature and general humanities from the Tel Aviv University in Tel Aviv, Israel. Born and raised in Israel, she has extensive international work experience and speaks five languages: English, Spanish, French, German, and Hebrew.
Her research interests focus on cross-cultural issues and the careers and work-life experiences of Hispanic immigrants, including entrepreneurship. As a faculty fellow, Dr. Shinnar has been actively involved with the local Hispanic community in the Boone area as an ESL tutor and a volunteer healthcare interpreter. She is especially proud of coordinating the “Day of the Dead” exhibit over the last three years, engaging Appalachian State University students and faculty alongside Hispanic and other community members in putting together this event.
Chishimba Nathan Mowa
Chishimba Mowa is a native of Zambia (Southern Africa). He obtained his veterinary degree from the University of Zambia, Lusaka, Zambia, and later got his masters of veterinary medicine and Ph.D. from Glasgow University, Glasgow, Scotland, and Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan, respectively. He then did a postdoctoral fellowship in the department of neurobiology, at the Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine, Rootstown, OH, where he was later appointed as a research instructor. Mowa joined the Department of Biology at Appalachian State University as an assistant professor and faculty fellow in July 2005.
Dr. Mowa’s broad research interests involve male and female reproduction, specifically the role of estrogen (plus plant estrogens) in the development of male external genitalia, and mechanisms that underlie the birth process. At ASU he has been involved in teaching endocrinology (Hormones in Action) and physiology. To complement his teaching, Dr. Mowa has numerous scientific publications to his credit, including more than 20 peer review manuscripts.
He serves on several university committees and is involved in community outreach programs, including but not limited to being a member of Appalachian’s McNair Grant Task Force, the Faculty Fellows Advisory Board, the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, as well as serving as the advisor for the African Student Association. He was selected as one of twenty participants to receive a national scholarship to attend the 2007, six week-intensive, summer laboratory and lecture course, Frontiers in Reproduction, at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, MA. The lectures and labs are taught by 30-40 leading investigators in the different areas of reproductive biology, and the MBL has a rich tradition and history of training experimental biologists.
Xiaorong Shao
Xiaorong Shao works as an information literacy librarian in the Belk Library and Information Commons at ASU. She earned an MLS degree in information and library science from Clarion University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Shao obtained a master’s degree from the University of Reading, UK, and a doctorate from Pennsylvania State University in agricultural education with a concentration in curriculum and instruction. Her bachelor’s degree, received from Northwest Agricultural University in China, is in soil science and chemistry.
Dr. Shao came to ASU as a faculty fellow in 2006, and her research and teaching interests are information literacy education, sustainable development, and international and diversity education. She is also interested in teaching statistics and research methods in the social and
behavioral sciences. Currently, she is serving on several committees including the International Student Recruitment, Retention and Alumni Services Committee, the Library Diversity Committee, and the Chinese Friendship Association.
Kin-Yan Szeto
Kin-Yan Szeto is an assistant professor of theatre and dance, with a Ph.D. in performance studies awarded by Northwestern University. She received her M.A. in theatre and drama studies from the University of London, and her M.A. in film studies from the Beijing Film Academy. Her teaching and research interests include literary, film, theatre and performance studies; performance of literature; postcolonial and global studies; and gender and ethnicity in transnational contexts.
At ASU, Szeto has expanded her repertoire to include material that relates to her research or is completely new. Szeto, along with other ASU faculty, is developing a “performance of culture” perspective in the general education curriculum. This program applies insights from performance art, theatre, dance, music and other art forms. Its interdisciplinary approach allows students to have the opportunities to study the unique role of “performance” in various aspects of our society as well as the world today.
As a scholar and teacher, Szeto has continually integrated interdisciplinary perspectives and methodologies in her work. Szeto has published articles on film and performance studies in MCLC, Jump Cut, Film Art (Beijing), and Visual Anthropology (forthcoming). Her articles have also been anthologized in Women’s Art and Healing (Taipei) and Cinema and Illusion (Beijing).
In addition to research and teaching, Szeto has enjoyed serving the academic community through committee work. Currently, she is serving on the College of Fine and Applied Arts Task Force, Scholarship Committee, Departmental Personnel Committee, Theatre Search Committee, Theatre Curriculum Committee, and Chinese Friendship Association. Szeto has chaired panels and presented papers at the Association for Asian Studies, Performance Studies International, and Society for Cinema and Media Studies conferences. She is very glad to have the opportunities to promote ASU’s diversity efforts on local, regional and international levels.
Ryan Emanuel
Dr. Emanuel is a Lumbee Indian from North Carolina who earned a B.S. degree in geology from Duke University before relocating to Virginia for several years for work and graduate study. He received a M.S. and Ph.D. in environmental sciences from the University of Virginia, where he studied carbon and water cycles in Virginia and Montana. Prior to joining the faculty at Appalachian, Dr. Emanuel worked as a postdoctoral research associate at Duke’s Center on Global Change, studying secondary ecosystem succession in North Carolina using remote sensing. Dr. Emanuel’s research in the areas of hydrology and land-atmosphere interaction has shown that agricultural fields continue to act as significant sources of atmospheric carbon dioxide even after they have been abandoned, and that terrestrial carbon and water fluxes are intimately linked to soil moisture and water stress across a broad range of terrestrial environments. His work has broad implications for the availability of groundwater and surface water resources, how these resources affect the terrestrial carbon cycle, and how these resources may vary in response to climate change.
Excerpts from Faculty Fellows Job Description
The Faculty Fellows Program offers a tenure track position to qualified individuals who hold an appropriate terminal degree, a record of or evidence of potential for teaching, scholarship, and service, and a strong commitment to promoting diversity within a university community. Particularly encouraged to apply are candidates with life experiences unique to underrepresented student and faculty populations at Appalachian. Fellows are expected to assume a leadership role in the university by serving as mentor/role models to students, developing and participating in programs and projects designed to foster a greater consciousness of diversity within the university community, serving with other fellows on the ASU Faculty Fellows Advisory Committee with the associate vice chancellor for diversity, equity and compliance, and assisting in advancing the university’s goal of enhancing appreciation and understanding of diversity among university employees and students. Such activity will be considered valuable service to the university and will be recognized and valued within the department where the fellow holds his or her appointment.
