During the 2025-2026 academic year, 24 faculty members within the College of Arts & Letters received promotions. The success of these individuals was celebrated at special ceremonies hosted by the Office of the Provost.
“On behalf of the College of Arts & Letters, I want to congratulate our faculty members who have earned promotions this year,” said Thomas Stubblefield, Dean of the College of Arts & Letters. “Academic promotion is one of the most meaningful ways we recognize the outstanding scholarship, teaching, and service of our faculty. These promotions reflect the significant contributions these faculty have made in advancing the mission of our college and the university.”
The following are the faculty members who received promotions during the 2025-2026 academic year.
Full Professor Promotions:
Kinitra Brooks
Kinitra Brooks was tenured and promoted to Professor in the Department of English, where she serves as the Audrey and John Leslie Endowed Chair in Literary Studies and Director of Graduate Programs in English. A leading scholar of Black women, genre fiction, and popular culture, she is the author of Searching for Sycorax: Black Women’s Hauntings of Contemporary Horror and Sycorax’s Daughters and co-editor of The Lemonade Reader. Her expertise has been featured in NPR’s 1A and the PBS documentary Afrofantastic. Current projects include an interdisciplinary anthology on Beyoncé’s Renaissance album and Red Dirt Witch, a graphic novel set during the Civil Rights Movement.
Joseph Darda
Joseph Darda was tenured and promoted to Professor in the Department of English. He is a historian of American culture, sports, and racial formation and the author of four books: Gift and Grit: Race, Sports, and the Construction of Social Debt (2025); The Strange Career of Racial Liberalism (2022); How White Men Won the Culture Wars: A History of Veteran America (2021), which CHOICE named an Outstanding Academic Title for 2022; and Empire of Defense: Race and the Cultural Wars (2019). Darda coordinates the University Studies Now speaker series at MSU and is developing new projects on the radical sports movement of the early 1970s and the history and culture of distance running in the United States.
Dustin De Felice
Dustin De Felice was promoted to Professor in the English Language Center. He serves as the Director where he leads a multifaceted language and testing center serving international students and partners. He oversees special initiatives and innovative certificates in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) and Global Business English. A central focus of his leadership is faculty support, development, and transparency. He mentors faculty through promotion pathways, oversees equitable workload planning, and has restored and protected key teaching positions. Through challenging years for international education, he has prioritized faculty well-being while sustaining program innovation, cross-college collaboration, and student success, including expanding scholarships, strengthening cross-college collaborations, and modernizing programs to ensure access, quality, and long-term sustainability.
Philip Effiong
Philip Effiong was promoted to Professor in the Department of Theatre. He also teaches Integrative Humanities courses. With more than 25 years of college-level teaching experience across the United States, Nigeria, and Ghana, his interdisciplinary research spans African and African diasporic drama, performance as resistance, and historical narratives redefining African achievements. He is the author of numerous scholarly articles and three books: My Biafran Scar: A War & Post-War Narrative (2025), Nigeria’s Un-Civil War: Memories of a Biafra Child (2023); and In Search of a Model for African-American Drama (2000). Effiong’s teaching at MSU includes drama, fiction, nonfiction, and history, reflecting his commitment to cross-disciplinary scholarship.
Felix Kronenberg
Felix Kronenberg was promoted to Professor in the Department of Linguistics, Languages, and Cultures. He also serves as Director of the Center for Language Teaching Advancement and is the founding Director of the National Less Commonly Taught Languages Resource Center. His research focuses on materiality in language education, program administration, learning space design, and technology. He is the author of Physical Language Learning Spaces in the Digital Age (2024) and co-editor of Language Program Vitality in the United States (2023). Kronenberg has received major grants, delivered numerous national and international keynotes, and currently serves as President-Elect on the Modern Language Association’s Association of Language Departments Executive Committee.
Marohang Limbu
Marohang Yakthung Limbu was promoted to Professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Cultures. His research focuses on digital rhetorics, global literacies, Indigenous rhetorical traditions, Indigenous pedagogy, and inter-epistemic communication. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Global Literacies, Emerging Pedagogies, and Technologies and co-editor of three IGI Global volumes, including Recovering Himalayan Cultural Traditions (2023). Limbu’s current work centers on Himalayan Yakthung Indigenous rhetorical traditions, cross-cultural communication, and 21st-century Indigenous pedagogy. His scholarship advances a decolonial, inter-epistemic approach that integrates technology with Indigenous cultural rhetorical traditions to foster inclusive and globally interconnected education. He underscores Indigenous knowledge systems, especially Yakthung Mundhum customary traditions, as essential to reframing communication, digital humanities, and global education. In his book, Delinking, Relinking, and Linking Writing and Rhetorics (2021), he theorized the DRL theoretical framework, a decolonial methodology that repositions Indigenous epistemologies, ontologies, and axiologies at the center of global rhetorical studies.
Matt McKeon
Matt McKeon was tenured and promoted to Professor in the Department of Philosophy. He has served as Chair of the Department of Philosophy since 2011. He specializes in logic, argumentation theory, and the ethics of arguing. His research explores the cognitive, linguistic, and normative dimensions of reasoning, including the relationship between explanations and arguments, autonomy and persuasion, and the requirements for using arguments to provide reasons. His second book, Arguments and Reason Giving, was published in 2024 with Oxford University press.
Joyce Meier
Joyce Meier was promoted to Professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Cultures, where she serves as Associate Director of MSU’s First-Year Writing Program. In this role, she helps hire and mentor faculty, facilitates workshops on pedagogy, supports new initiatives, and oversees program operations. Meier teaches courses in first-year writing, grant writing, and community writing, with a particular interest in multilingual and translingual pedagogies. Her work integrates administrative leadership with innovative, inclusive teaching practices that prepare students to write effectively across academic, professional, and community contexts while supporting faculty development and program excellence.
Elena Ruíz
Elena Ruíz was tenured and promoted to Professor in the Department of Philosophy. She is the founder and Director of the Research Institute for Structural Change (RISC) in the College of Arts & Letters and holds affiliations in American Indian and Indigenous Studies, Chicano and Latino Studies, and the Center for Gender in Global Context (GenCen). She is a political theorist working on systemic violence and violence prevention in public health, with a focus on health equity for survivors of gender-based violence. Ruíz works with grassroots organizations to improve community health infrastructures and has authored numerous works on gender-based violence and structural oppression. She served as Principal Researcher on Gender-Based Violence for the MeToo organization and is the author of Structural Violence (Oxford UP, 2024).
Laura Smith
Laura Smith was promoted to Professor in the Department of Art, Art History, and Design, with specializations in North American Arts, Native North American Arts, and Photography. Affiliated with American Indian and Indigenous Studies and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, her research examines how Indigenous artists use photography, video, and digital media to assert identity and challenge settler colonial narratives. She is the author of Horace Poolaw, Photographer of American Indian Modernity (2016) and the editor of the forthcoming volume from the University of New Mexico Press, Discrepant Art Histories: New Writings on Indigenous Art and Museum Practice. Other recent writings have been featured in the Journal of Communication and Languages, No. 57, Special Issue: Decolonizing Visuality: Looks, Consciences, Ways of Thinking and Acting (December 2022), Visualities II: Perspectives on Contemporary American Indian Film and Art (Michigan State University Press, 2019). Her courses have provided a solid foundation in the arts of the Americas, which have contributed to the diversity of the department curriculum. Her special interest in the ways digital immersive technologies can advance equity, foster collaboration, and expand inclusivity in the teaching of art history inspired unique pedagogical projects, which were published by the Digital Library Federation Pedagogy Work Group (2021).
Associate Professor Promotions:
Alexis Black
Alexis Black was promoted to Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre, where she is a movement specialist, intimacy director, fight director, performer, and educator. A certified Intimacy Director with Intimacy Directors and Coordinators, she also holds certifications in the Michael Chekhov Technique and Margolis Method. Her Broadway credits include Fool for Love and Macbeth, with additional fight and movement direction in New York City, Europe, South Korea, and regional theatres. An Actors’ Equity Association actor, she has toured internationally and performed widely. Black is co-author of Supporting Staged Intimacy (2022) and publishes research on acting pedagogy, inclusivity, and neurodiversity in performance training.
Silvina Bongiovanni
Silvina Bongiovanni was tenured and promoted to Associate Professor in the Department of Romance and Classical Studies. Her research lies within the framework of laboratory phonology, which brings together experimental methods and theoretical models of sound structure. She focuses primarily on Spanish, using phonetic tools to explore how phonological contrasts are maintained, how sound patterns emerge and vary in everyday speech, and how alternations develop. She also does work in second language phonology, especially how learner production and perception inform theory and pedagogy.
Ryan Claytor
Ryan Claytor was promoted to Associate Professor in the Department of Art, Art History, and Design, where he coordinates the Comic Art and Graphic Novel minor and teaches comics studio courses. In 2025, his most recent book received national recognition, garnering award nominations from both the Eisner and Ringo Comic Book Industry Awards (the top two awards in comics) adding to his list of accolades, including first place in the Graphic Novel category at the Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo, serving as Cartoonist in Residence at the San Francisco Cartoon Art Museum, and more. His work has been exhibited nationally, and his clients include Moleskine, Verizon Wireless, and Mr. Jones Watches. Claytor developed and taught MSU’s first comics studio course and continues to make advancements in comics education.
Ayman Mohamed
Ayman Mohamed was promoted to Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics, Languages, and Cultures, where he teaches all levels of Arabic and Egyptian dialect. His research focuses on task-based learning, incidental vocabulary acquisition, and translanguaging pedagogy in the Arabic classroom. Mohamed has led curricular innovation through hybrid and online course design and the creation of open-source Arabic textbooks, in addition to El-Mumtaaz (2025) in Egyptian Arabic. His work has appeared in Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Foreign Language Annals, and other journals. A Fulbright alum, he received MSU’s IT Excellence in Teaching with Technology Award for advancing open education and inclusive pedagogy in less commonly taught languages.
Ryan Welsh
Ryan Welsh was tenured and promoted to Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre. An actor, director, and writer, his films have screened internationally and earned awards, including Best of Festival at the Seattle Deaf Film Festival. His acting credits include work with Los Angeles’ Center Theatre Group, a Streamy Award nomination for the Lionsgate series Bite Me, and Best Lead Actor at the FilmQuest International Film Festival. As a writer, he has produced and commissioned screenplays and staged plays at festivals and theatres across the country. He co-wrote and co-directed the feature film When We Get There, which is set to be released in March 2026.
Laura Yares
Laura Yares was tenured and promoted to Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies. She is a scholar of religion, history, culture, and education in North America with a focus on Jewish contexts. Her first book Jewish Sunday Schools: Teaching Religion in Nineteenth-Century America (2023) was a finalist for both the 2023 National Jewish Book Award and the 2024 American Academy of Religion Book Award. Her second book, Judaism Mediated: Learning About Jewishness through the Cultural Art, will be published by NYU Press in August 2026. Yares co-leads a year-long professional development program for 8-10th-grade English Language Arts and Social Studies teachers who teach about religion, social justice, and genocide in Michigan public schools.
Academic Specialist Promotions:
Leah Addis
Leah C. Addis was promoted to Senior Academic Specialist in the English Language Center, where she has taught since 2008. Dedicated to her students and colleagues, she brings international language teaching experience to her work at MSU. Before joining MSU, she taught at Nagoya University of Foreign Studies in Japan. Addis has a B.A. in Spanish and Anthropology from Iowa State University and an M.A. in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) from the Monterey Institute of International Studies. She is particularly interested in content-based ESL writing, discourse-based grammar for communication, and language teacher training.
Heekyoung Kim
Heekyoung Kim was promoted to Senior Academic Specialist in the English Language Center, where she has served as a testing specialist since 2009. She brings extensive international and U.S. academic experience to her work in language assessment. She earned her Ph.D. in English as a Second Language Education from Texas A&M University, an M.A. in English Education with a concentration in phonology from Seoul National University, and a B.A. in English Language and Literature from Sogang University. Kim’s professional interests include sociolinguistics, individual differences, and language testing in second language acquisition.
Amy Kroesche
Amy Kroesche was promoted to Senior Academic Specialist in the English Language Center and does academic advising for the Department of Philosophy, Global Studies program, and the Arts & Letters Exploratory major. She holds a B.A. in English from Northwestern College in Iowa and a Master’s in TESOL from MSU. She has 25 years of teaching experience, including seven years teaching English in South Korea. She has been with the English Language Center since 2007. Her primary areas of interest include teacher training, reflective teaching practices, and using young adult literature and short stories with English language learners.
Aaron Ohlrogge
Aaron Ohlrogge was promoted to Senior Academic Specialist in the English Language Center, where he oversees the development, administration, and scoring of the MSUELT, MSU Speaking Test, and other assessments, as well as coordinating development and scoring of MSU’s CELC and CELP certification exams in Greece. He has taught classes in the Master’s of Arts in Foreign Language Teaching program and the English Language Center and also serves as a consultant for MSU departments on ITA testing. Ohlrogge holds a B.A. in English and Linguistics from the University of Michigan and an MA-TESOL from Michigan State University. His professional interests include writing assessment, ITA testing, rater training, and the use of AI in test development.
Matthew Rynbrandt
Matthew Rynbrandt was promoted to Senior Academic Specialist in the English Language Center, where he oversees Speaking/Listening courses. A Mid-Michigan native, he earned his B.A. in English and M.A. in TESOL from Michigan State University. Rynbrandt has taught internationally, including three years at Zayed University in the United Arab Emirates, and previously taught in China. His international teaching experience informs his work with MSU’s diverse student population, fostering effective communication skills for academic and professional success. Dedicated to language education and student growth, Rynbrandt brings a global perspective to his leadership in the English Language Center’s speaking and listening curriculum.
Carol Wilson-Duffy
Carol Wilson-Duffy was promoted to Senior Academic Specialist in the English Language Center, where she has developed external special programs for students and teachers from across Asia, the Middle East, Europe, Latin America, and Africa. With nearly 20 years of educational technology training experience in the United States and Korea, she has taught English as a Second Language and computer-assisted language learning, including distance instruction to Micronesia. Wilson-Duffy is a web designer and editor for Language Learning & Technology, past president of Michigan TESOL, and a former member of TESOL’s Technology Advisory Board, contributing extensively to language teaching innovation and global program development.
Senior Instructor Promotions:
Peter B. Hoffman
Peter B. Hoffman was promoted to Senior Instructor in the English Language Center. He earned his M.A. in TESOL from Michigan State University in 1989 and began his career teaching English for three years at the Japan Center for Michigan Universities in Shiga, Japan. He then spent 17 years teaching ESL at the City University of New York while living in Elmhurst, Queens, one of the most ethnically diverse communities in the world. Hoffman brings decades of international and urban teaching experience to MSU, fostering language learning in a culturally inclusive environment for students from around the globe.
Laura Ramm
Laura Ramm was promoted to Senior Instructor in the English Language Center. She holds a B.S. in Communication and Theatre Arts, an M.S. in Educational Theatre, and an M.A. in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) from Eastern Michigan University. Her career includes teaching Adult Basic Education (ABE) in Ann Arbor, speech communication as a graduate teaching assistant, and in work abroad programs in London and New York with international students. Specializing in English pronunciation, she has published in TESOL’s New Ways series and presented at TESOL and MITESOL conferences, integrating her global teaching experiences into her work with English language learners at MSU.
By Austin Curtis and Kim Popiolek
