Georgetown University’s graduate schools welcomed 21 new faculty members for the Fall 2024 semester.
Renee Bowen (GRD ’03, GRD ’08), Ross Cooper, Dana Kanze, Xiaomeng Lu and Justin Tosi will join the McDonough School of Business, while Rush Doshi and Renanah Joyce will teach graduate courses in the School of Foreign Service’s Security Studies Program. Stephanie Barclay, Stephen Vladeck, Emily Chertoff, Filippo Lancieri, Sarah Sloan, Sara Colangelo and Eduardo Ferrer will teach at the Georgetown University Law Center (GULC); the McCourt School of Public Policy will welcome Nejla Asimovic, Kaylee Matheny, Thessalia Merivaki, Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, Lisa Singh and Meri Wimberly; and Regina Labelle will assume a joint appointment in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and GULC.
Chertoff, a new professor at GULC who researches immigration law, said she joined because of the school’s knowledgeable faculty and its Washington, D.C. location.
“Georgetown Law School has a very strong public law faculty across a lot of different areas including administrative law, which is one of my areas of focus, as well as constitutional law, which I also study and I’m interested in,” Chertoff told The Hoya. “And what I hope is that being in D.C., being at Georgetown, will give me an opportunity to educate students, educate the public about these areas of law, in addition to conducting my research from an advantageous position.”
Merivaki, a new associate teaching professor at McCourt and associate research professor at the Massive Data Institute who researches false information and election integrity, said she joined McCourt for its renowned reputation and the opportunities it provides for students to dialogue with policymakers.
“McCourt is one of the top programs in the country in public policy,” Merivaki told The Hoya. “It has a great student body who is trained to understand how public policy works, but also gets the opportunity to directly interact with policy makers and other stakeholders in the country.”
“I find this to be the best combination that maximizes the learning experience and also ensures that students who graduate from the program get great jobs, and they contribute to improving the democracy space, very broadly defined,” Merivaki said.
Matheny, who is joining McCourt as one of the Provost’s Distinguished Faculty Fellows, a one-year program where fellows are hired on the tenure track as assistant professors to develop their research programs, said what initially attracted her to McCourt was the opportunity to engage in conversations with students and faculty from diverse backgrounds.
“I come from a school of education which is also, by nature and by design, interdisciplinary,” Matheny told The Hoya. “Being able to transfer over that ability to communicate with people from different disciplinary backgrounds, but who are also all working toward the same goal of thinking through policies carefully and about how they can better serve people, is something that I was really excited about.”
Chertoff said teaching first-year law students has been particularly rewarding, as she has been able to learn from students who bring diverse backgrounds and perspectives.
“They come in with really interesting backgrounds, ideas and different perspectives that allow them to make really creative contributions in class,” Chertoff said. “That’s exciting for me because I feel like I’m learning with them. I’m learning about the things that I’m interested in, hearing them talk about things from their different perspectives.”
Matheny said one of her goals is to empower students through her teaching, helping them build confidence in areas like research.
“One of the things that I’m really passionate about as a teacher is to help students see themselves as a math person or as a research person,” Matheny said. “I want to help them to be able to open doors that they might not have seen themselves or be able to walk through before.”
Merivaki said she is excited to teach and learn from her students.
“I am very excited to provide a hands-on experience, both in the classroom and outside of the classroom, and I hope to learn a lot from students at McCourt, because they come from very, very diverse backgrounds,” Merivaki said. “It’s a mutually beneficial relationship of learning and experience that I’m really looking forward to.”