Experts in neuroscience and financial literacy, an award-winning author and a Middle East scholar are among GW’s newest crop of professors.
“This is a terrific group of scholars who will have an impact on the GW community this year and in the coming years,” says Provost Steven Lerman.
The 116 new faculty members this fall include three deans—Lynn Goldman, Michael J. Feuer and Doug Guthrie—who bring a wealth of scholarship and experience to GW’s School of Public Health and Health Services, Graduate School of Education and Human Development and School of Business, respectively.
They also include a new university professor: acclaimed international affairs scholar Michael Barnett.
“As someone who studies world affairs and American foreign policy, there is no better place to be than Washington,” says Dr. Barnett, who came to GW from the University of Minnesota.
“Over the last decade GW has generated quite a buzz in higher education in general and international affairs in particular—as a place where great things are happening and going to continue to happen,” says Dr. Barnett, whose specialties include the Middle East, humanitarianism, international affairs and international organizations. “It is exciting to join in that effort.”
University professor is GW’s highest ranking academic honor, created to recognize outstanding scholarship. Dr. Barnett joins seven other university professors at GW.
An expert in financial literacy, saving behavior and entrepreneurship, Annamaria Lusardi has advised institutions across the world, including the U.S. Treasury, Social Security Administration, World Bank and Dutch Central Bank.
She joined GW this fall as a professor of accountancy and economics from Dartmouth College, where she taught for nearly two decades.
“I wanted to be at a top school in the center of where so much is happening to address the financial crisis and in financial literacy and policy,” she says.
GW’s reputation and research opportunities were the appeal for renowned neuroscientist Anthony-Samuel LaMantia.
“I was drawn to GW by the chance to help expand and enrich the neuroscience research community,” says Dr. LaMantia, who left the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to lead GW’s new Institute for Neuroscience.
Dr. LaMantia expects his research on early brain development to benefit from interactions with GW colleagues and says the multidisciplinary institute has the potential to address critical issues in health and disease, including disorders like autism.
“I also was struck by the excitement on campus about building for the future, combined with a sense of continuity with the traditions of the institution—a research university woven into the fabric of the nation’s capital,” he says.
GW also gained a Pulitzer Prize winner this fall with the addition of author Edward P. Jones.
Mr. Jones’ novel The Known World earned the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critic’s Circle award. He has also won the PEN/Hemingway Award and a MacArthur “genius grant.”
Now a professor of English in the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, Mr. Jones will teach a creative writing seminar in the spring. “I am very excited about teaching,” he says.
It’s a sentiment echoed by H. Jefferson Powell, GW’s new Lyle T. Alverson Professor of Law.
“I love teaching and the interactions with students and colleagues that make up the heart of academic life,” says Dr. Powell, a top legal scholar from Duke University who holds both a law degree and a Ph.D. in ethics.
“GW Law School, with its great faculty and students, located in the seat of government, and part of the vibrant intellectual life of the university, had tremendous appeal to me,” says Dr. Powell. “This is a great university, and I am fortunate to be a part of it.”