Grove City College begins a new academic year this week with 15 new faculty members teaching in classrooms and labs across campus.
The group includes a number of alumni. They are:
- Andrew DiDonato ’10, assistant professor of Exercise Science – DiDonato earned a B.S. in Business Management from the College in 2010 and a M.S. in Exercise Science from California University of Pennsylvania in 2011. He will teach exercise science and physical education. DiDonato will also serve as assistant head football coach and is the designated successor to Head Coach Chris Smith ’72, who is in his final season with the Wolverines. A standout player in his student days, DiDonato holds College records for career passing, pass completions and touchdown passes.
- Richard Kocur ’87, assistant professor of Business – Kocur will teach marketing and sales. He earned his B.S. in biology from the College in 1987 and MBA, with a concentration in marketing, from the Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh in 1999. Kocur comes to the College from Glaxo SmithKline Consumer Healthcare, where he directed marketing efforts toward dental professionals. During his health care sector career, he held positions in sales, brand marketing, shopper marketing and business intelligence. His specialization is in the areas of relationship-based professional sales and digital marketing.
- Dr. Adam Loretto ’05, assistant professor of English/Writing – Loretto will be teaching writing. He completed his Ph.D. in Language, Literacy and Culture in the School of Education at the University of Pittsburgh in 2015, Previously, Loretto was a high school English teacher in the Pittsburgh area. He earned a M.A. in Teaching from the University of Pittsburgh. He earned his B.A. in English from the College in 2005. His specialization is writing instruction at the secondary and college levels.
- Joshua Mayo ’10, instructor of English/Writing – Mayo joins the Department of English as an instructor in the Writing Program. He earned a B.A. in English from the College in 2010, holds a M.A. in English from the University of Mississippi and a M.A. in Literature from the University of Dallas, where he is working on his Ph.D. in Literature. His interests in composition include rhetoric, poetics and the classical arts’ potential to rejuvenate academic discourse. An active writer, Mayo’s work has appeared in First Things and the Circe Institute's Forma blog
- Dr. P. Jesse Rine ’01, assistant provost – Rine joins the Office of the Provost to provide support for data-driven institutional decision making, external benchmarking and strategic planning. He completed his Ph.D. in higher education with a specialization in social foundations of education at the University of Virginia in 2010 and earned a M.A. in Teaching in Latin from Washington University in St. Louis in 2004 and a B.A. in Christian Thought from the College in 2001. Rine most recently directed research for the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities and the Council of Independent Colleges and his work has appeared in the Journal of College Student Development, Religion and Education and Christian Higher Education.
The other new faculty members are:
- Dana Ault, instructor of Exercise Science – Ault, a Ph.D. candidate at Kent State University, joins the Department of Exercise Science and Athletics. She will be teaching classes in exercise science. She earned her M.S. in Exercise Physiology/Adult Fitness from The University of Akron in 2013 and her B.S. in Exercise Science at Slippery Rock University in 2011. She is studying the effects of adaptive cycling on motor and sensory function in individuals with Parkinson’s disease and is interested in understanding and identifying biomarkers of aging, physiological responses that occur during exercising and the effects of obesity on movement and physical activity.
- Dr. Kenneth Carson, professor of Business – Carson joins the Department of Business to teach courses in management, leadership, organizational behavior and statistics. He earned his Ph.D. in industrial/organizational psychology from University of Akron in 1985 and has held faculty positions at California Polytechnic University – Pomona, Arizona State University, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and Geneva College, where he was most recently the vice president for academic affairs and provost. Carson has published more than 20 co-authored articles in refereed journals, and has presented numerous papers at a variety of professional conferences.
- Susan McIntyre, instructor of Mathematics – McIntyre, who taught at the College previously in the 1980s and 1990s and as a part time instructor in the spring, will be teaching courses in finite math, pre-calculus, business calculus and calculus. She completed an M.S. in Mathematical Sciences in 1986 at Clemson University and earned a B.S. in Mathematics at the University of Louisville in 1984. She spent 14 years homeschooling her children before returning to Grove City in the spring. Her husband Dale McIntyre has been a professor in the Mathematics Department for 27 years.
- Dr. Sarina Moore, assistant professor of English – Moore, who earned a Ph.D. in English at the University of Virginia in 2011, joins the Department of English to teach British literature and literary theory. Prior to joining GCC, Moore was a visiting assistant professor at Calvin College. She earned her B.A. in English and philosophy from Wheaton College. She is a co-editor of “Place and Progress in the Works of Elizabeth Gaskell” and is currently compiling a collection of essays on teaching Gaskell’s industrial novels at the high school, undergraduate and graduate levels.
- Dr. Rebecca Rine, assistant professor of Biblical and Religious Studies – Rine will teach biblical studies and the history of biblical interpretation and work in the College’s new Writing Program. She completed her Ph.D. in Scripture, Interpretation and Practice at the University of Virginia in 2012 and earned an M.A. in English with an emphasis in Applied Linguistics at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in 2003 and a B.A. in English at Campbell University in 2001. Previously, she taught religion and literature at George Mason University and was a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Early Christianity at The Catholic University of America.
- Dr. Kristen Waha, assistant professor of English – Waha will teach world and European literature classes. She earned her doctorate in Comparative Literature at the University of California – Davis in 2015 and a B.A. in English from Westmont College in 2006. Her areas of specialization include 19th-century British and French literature and colonial Indian literatures written in English and Tamil. She is interested in the circulation of texts between Europe and the Indian subcontinent through publication and translation and also focuses on narratives of inter-religious exchange and religious conversion in colonial contexts.
- Dr. Britton Wolfe, associate professor of Computer Science – Wolfe joins the Department of Computer Science, where his specialties are machine learning and data science, which combine mathematics, statistics and computer science. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 2009 and his bachelor's degree from Carnegie Mellon University in 2003. He most recently served as an assistant professor at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne.
- Dr. Venney Wong, assistant professor of Chemistry – Wong joins the Department of Chemistry to teach analytical chemistry. She completed her doctorate and bachelor’s degrees in chemistry at Southern Illinois University Carbondale in 2011 and 2005; respectively. Her specialization is in the development and optimization of polyelectrolyte polymer brushes for the fractionation of peptide mixtures. She is committed to pursuing chemical education research while teaching.
- Dr. Jie Wu, associate professor of Mathematics – Wu will teach mathematics and statistics. He completed his doctorate in mathematics at Louisiana State University in 2006 and earned his M.S. in economics at Zhejiang University, China, and B.S. in applied mathematics at Central South University, China. He was most recently on the faculty at Thiel College. His research interests are probability theory and randomly determined processes. He has been working on stochastic differential equations and probability measures within interacting particle systems for more than a decade.
- Youhui Zhang, assistant professor of Finance / Business – Zhang joins the Department of Business, where his teaching and research interests include hedge funds, risk management, investments, international finance and applying financial models. He completed his doctoral study in finance at the University of Massachusetts – Amherst in 2015 and earned his B.S. and Masters in Management in accounting degrees from Dalian University of Technology, China.