4 new leaders are joining The College this fall
As the academic heart of Arizona State University, The College fosters educational excellence across 21 academic units and over 50 research centers and institutes across the humanities, natural sciences and social sciences. ASU photo
The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences welcomed four new administrators to its roster in July, just in time for the new semester.
“The College is home to incredibly talented faculty and staff who are dedicated to the success of our students and expanding the horizons of knowledge,” said The College’s Dean and Senior Vice Provost of ASU Kenro Kusumi. “We are fortunate to have these accomplished academic unit leaders starting with us this fall. I look forward to supporting their innovative efforts to serve our students and communities.”
As the academic heart of Arizona State University, The College fosters educational excellence across 21 academic units and over 50 research centers and institutes across the humanities, natural sciences and social sciences.
Get to know some of the new leaders in the community.
Kenro Kusumi, senior vice provost, ASU; dean, The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Kusumi was appointed to his new role this past spring. He is a professor of life sciences and has been serving as the dean of the natural sciences division since 2021. Kusumi has been at ASU two years shy of a decade, holding numerous leadership positions during his time at the School of Life Sciences before becoming its director in 2019.
As dean of natural sciences, he oversaw close to 500 faculty across six units and 16,000 students. The natural sciences division made up more than $132 million in research expenditures in fiscal year 2023. Kusumi is a genome biologist who helps conserve and study the functional adaptations of reptiles. During his research, he helped sequence genomes of the threatened Mojave desert tortoise and led the first genome-scale analysis of accelerated evolution with the anole lizard.
“This is a unique opportunity to prepare students with the critical thinking and problem-solving skills of a liberal arts and sciences education, transform our curriculum to promote student success and advance ASU’s research and scholarship to address the challenges of the 21st century, as outlined in the ASU Charter,” Kusumi said.
Angela Gonzales, director, American Indian Studies
Gonzales is moving to American Indian Studies as its new director. Gonzales has been a faculty lead of the justice studies program at the School of Social Transformation and most recently served as the interim director of the Center of Indian Education. She is an Arizona native and a citizen of the Hopi nation, and she currently works with the Colorado Plateau Foundation and the Hopi Education Endowment Fund.
Gonzales previously served as a faculty member at Cornell University prior to joining ASU in 2016. There she worked with the Haudenosaunee communities and conducted research with the Hopi Tribe to identify the presence of high-risk HPV types in American Indian women and increase awareness of vaccines available.
“I really wanted to be at a place where there were more Native faculty than you can count on one hand," she said. “You just can't rival the kind of Native presence and community engagement that is happening here at ASU.”
Richard Avramenko, director, School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership
Avramenko will be joining the ASU community as the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership’s new director. He will be bringing his expertise in political sciences and civic education from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he taught for 19 years and most recently served as the director of the Center for the Study of Liberal Democracy and was a professor of political science.
He is the author of an award-winning book titled “Courage: The Politics of Life and Limb,” which examines true courage based on political thought leaders throughout time. Avramenko hopes to combine classical texts from the likes of Plato and Aristotle to engage students in addressing modern-day issues.
“At the heart of the mission of the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership is to learn how our forebears ameliorated — or exacerbated — the political challenges and pathologies that always plague human beings,” he said. “The opportunity to lead a whole school that approaches civic and economic thought like this was impossible to pass up.”
Manushag “Nush” Powell, chair, Department of English
Powell is set to begin her new role as chair of the Department of English this summer. She comes from Purdue University, where she served as the secretary of faculties and associate head of English. Currently, she is the parliamentarian to the American Society for 18th-Century Studies and a member of the board of directors of the American Institute of Parliamentarians.
Powell comes to ASU with a background in 18th-century British literature and culture along with historical publishing, women’s periodicals and narratives of piracy. She has also published several books, including “Performing Authorship in Eighteenth-Century English Periodicals” and “Women’s Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain,” with plans to release a new edition of “The Buccaneers of America” in 2025. She previously taught classes in academic publishing, British literature and culture, and dragons and piracy in literature and history at Purdue.
“I am thrilled and honored to be entrusted with a leadership position in ASU's Department of English,” Powell said. “The department is a thriving center of the very best research and teaching, and boasts a uniquely diverse portfolio of research areas, programs and initiatives."
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