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The Tufts Daily
Where you read it first | Sunday, August 17, 2025

Thirty-four professors to join faculty

Thirty-four new faculty members are slated to join Tufts' Colleges of Liberal Arts and Engineering this year, some replacing departed faculty, others hired to staff departments growing in popularity.

The electrical engineering and computer science departments are seeing the largest increase, with six new faculty members joining their ranks, while the mathematics and philosophy departments also welcomed several new faces.

Yvette Landry, Staff Assistant for the department of electrical engineering and computer science, explained that the large number of new hires comes from increased student interest in the computer science courses.

"We've just gotten to be a very large department," she said. "The computer sciences have become a big demand, and we only had six computer scientists."

One new addition hired to address student demand is Professor Ming-Yang Kao, who received a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1986. Kao comes to Tufts after leaving his post as visiting associate professor of computer science at Yale, where he accumulated such honors as a student nomination for the Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award and the Departmental Teaching Award in the computer science department. Deborah Hernandez, for example, will bring Latin American perspective to the Anthropology department next semester, when she assumes the role of Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology. Hernandez has taught Latino studies at both Brown and Harvard Universities and has conducted fieldwork in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Columbia. She is the author of Bachata: A Social History of a Dominican Popular Music and is currently writing a new book called The Latino Music Mosaic.

"We convinced the University that in Latino and Latin studies there is a great deal of student interest," said Anthropology Professor David Guss. "It is to the benefit of the University that they saw the wisdom in this hire."

Also returning to campus this fall after a 15-year absence is former Jumbo Marina Seevak, the new Director of the Curriculum Resource Laboratory for the department of child development. Seevak received her B.A. in English from Tufts in 1985 and her Masters in education from Lesley College in 1987.

While many professors are coming from nationally-known universities, a number of new faculty members hail from international locales as well. After leaving the University LUISS in Rome, author Sebastiano Maffettone will serve as a visiting professor in the Philosophy Department. Maffettone, whose specialties include moral and political philosophy, is the author of "I Valore della vita", Italy's most popular philosophical essay in 1999. He was also recently appointed as director of CERSDU, a center on human rights for universities.

Sorbonne graduate Christian Delacampagne will be joining the department of romance languages as an assistant professor of 18th-century French literature. Delacampagne, who also studied at the Ecole Normale Superieure, is one of three new faces in the romance languages department, along with Visiting Professor Ana Maria Amar Sanchez and Associate Professor Brigitte Lane.

Lane is very fond of the Boston area and looks forward to teaching in Tufts' academic atmosphere. "One of my major interests is immigration," she said. "It was my wish to teach at a university where the arts and sciences weren't strictly separated. [Tufts] seems to be a dynamic institution that is open to the diversity that forms the core of my work."

Hiring new faculty can be a long and arduous process, since departments are often looking for people with very specific qualities and skills for each position. Many of the new hires are not just filling vacancies, but were hired after the University reassessed student interest and need in specific departments.