4 Faculty Receive Tenure, Promotions

The following faculty were conferred tenure, effective July 1, 2021 by the Board of Trustees at its most recent meeting:

David Kuenzel, associate professor of economics; Michelle Personick, associate professor of chemistry; and Olga Sendra Ferrer, associate professor of Spanish.

In addition, one faculty member was promoted, effective July 1, 2020: Valerie Nazzaro, associate professor of the practice in quantitative analysis.

Brief descriptions of their areas of research and teaching appear below:

David Kuenzel’s scholarship focuses on international trade and economic growth. In his research, he analyzes nations’ trade policies, trade flows, and economic growth in connection with the policies of institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) or with national political arrangements. He has published peer-reviewed papers in such prestigious journals as European Economic Review, Canadian Journal of Economics, Review of International Economics, Journal of Macroeconomics, and International Journal of Forecasting, and has co-authored International Monetary Fund (IMF) working and policy papers. Professor Kuenzel has been a visiting scholar at the IMF and the WTO. He offers courses on economic growth, macroeconomics, international trade, and economic theory.

Valerie Nazzaro is a statistician who specializes in missing data techniques, multiple imputation, and educational research. She has co-authored a number of papers, including two articles about pedagogical methods used in Quantitative Analysis Center classes at Wesleyan. She served on the education executive committee of the New England Statistical Society and was the education outreach coordinator for the Connecticut Chapter of the American Statistical Association. Nazzaro also organizes the annual “DataFest” event, which draws teams from across Connecticut. She offers courses on applied data analysis, data visualization, survival analysis, and statistics education.

Michelle Personick’s research in inorganic chemistry is focused on developing tailored metal nanoparticles that function as improved catalysts for energy- and resource-efficient chemical synthesis and the clean production of energy. Her goal is to transform the overall energy landscape and offset the driving forces of climate change. She has published numerous peer-reviewed articles and one book chapter, and her work has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, Army Research Office, and American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund. Personick offers courses on principles of chemistry II, advanced inorganic chemistry, chemistry of materials and nanomaterials, and nanomaterials laboratory.

Olga Sendra Ferrer is an expert in modern literature and culture from the Iberian Peninsula and Catalonia. Her forthcoming book, Barcelona, City of Margins (University of Toronto Press, 2021), integrates aspects of cultural studies, urban studies, and historical archival work to examine the ways in which writers and photographers during the Franco dictatorship found ways to offer dissent by operating on the cultural and geographical margins of the city of Barcelona. Sendra Ferrer teaches courses on Spanish literature and culture, including Modern Spain: Literature, Painting and the Arts in their Historical Context, and Detective Fiction Procedure and Paranoia in Spanish Narrative.