The College of Arts and Sciences begins the 2026–2027 academic year with five new department chairs, a new director for the Associate in Arts program and 17 new faculty members. Such development and growth are a reflection of the College's commitment to advancing student success, scholarship, and campus and community engagement.

The new faculty members are joining eight departments across the college, plus the School of Music, with the Department of Mathematical Sciences adding the most hires. 

“We are excited to welcome an outstanding cohort of new leaders and faculty,” said Caleb Everett, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. “Their dedication to the success of our students and cutting-edge scholarship will enrich the college and advance its excellence well into the future."

Leadership appointments were announced in the departments of Anthropology, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Languages, Literatures and Cultures, Political Science and International Relations, and Women and Gender Studies, and the Associate in Arts program.

Thomas Rocek is the new interim chair of the Department of Anthropology. His research interests include middle-range societies, agricultural origins, mobility and sedentism, quantitative analysis and particularly comparative approaches to archaeological analysis. Rocek is the co-editor of Seasonality and Sedentism: Archaeological Perspectives from Old and New World Sites. Most recently, these comparative interests have included both the Formative period in the Southwestern United States and the Neolithic period in the Czech Republic. He earned his doctorate from the University of Michigan.

Rachael Hutchinson, the Elias Ahuja Professor in Japanese Studies and Game Studies, is now the chair of languages, literatures and cultures, after serving as interim chair for one year. She specializes in the representations of Japanese identity in a range of narrative texts – literature, film, manga and videogames. Earlier this year, she published two book chapters on Japanese videogame analysis, “Ideologies of the Body in Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid Series,” in The Metal Gear Solid Series: Critical Essays and New Perspectives, and “For the Love of Monsters: Yōkai and Colonialism in Japanese Games,” in Monstrosity in Games and Play: A Multidisciplinary Examination of the Monstrous in Contemporary Cultures. These essays examine Japanese blockbuster games such as Metal Gear Solid and Pokemon through disability aesthetics and colonial frameworks. She received her doctorate from Oxford University.

Andrew Teplayakov has been named the new chair of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. A physical chemist, his research focuses on surface and interface science. Using the techniques and methods of physical chemistry, the work seeks to solve problems related to chemical transformations of organic and organometallic compounds on semiconductors, thin solid film growth and etching, nanostructure and nanomaterial formation. He received his doctorate from Columbia University. 

Matthew Weinert is the new chair of political science and international relations. His research is broadly concerned with structures and processes of world order, and is specifically engaged with human security, human rights, and human dignity dimensions of world order. Weinert was recently published work examining crimes against cultural heritage and the International Criminal Court in the Review of International Studies. He earned his doctorate from the University of Denver. 

Jennifer Naccarelli has been named the new chair of the Department of Women and Gender Studies. Founding director of UD's Center for the Study and Prevention of Gender Based Violence, she is also the director of UDs Domestic Violence Prevention and Services program Her work explores the intersection of feminist theory and practice through the integration of service learning within academic curriculums. 

Sarah Trembanis has been named the new director of the Associate in Arts program.​ Trembanis teaches and studies twentieth-century American history, with a specific emphasis on how culture has intersected with racial and gender identity. She teaches a wide variety of courses on race, gender, film and sport. Recently, she taught a seminar for Delaware educators on how to incorporate sport into curriculum for K-12 students, through the Delaware Teachers Institute. 

In her book, The Set Up Men: Race, Culture, and Resistance in Black Baseball (McFarland, 2014), she argues that African Americans used trickster tales, naming practices, humor and editorial art to attack the racial binarism and white supremacy that undergirded Jim Crow policies in white Major League baseball. Currently, she is working on a monograph about the performance of gender by teenage-daughter characters in 1950s American sitcoms. 

The new faculty members and their departments are:

Anthropology

• Andres Leon Araya

Art and Design

• Brandan Henry

Art History

• Alison Terndrup

Chemistry and Biochemistry

• Jordan Mohr

• Elizabeth Singewald

• Ashkan "Ash" Yazdanshenas

Communication

• Emily Pfender

Mathematical Sciences

• Jacob Calvert

• Seongyong Kim

• Gregory Michajlyszyn

• Theodore "Teddy" Mishura

• Anjali Nair

Physics and Astronomy

• Olga Navros

Psychological and Brain Sciences

• Nicholas Collins

School of Music

• Brianne Borden

• Baldwin Giang

• Sunmin Yoon