Talented, diverse group of six Lawrence faculty earn tenure appointments

Six Lawrence University faculty members have been granted 2023 tenure appointments.

President Laurie A. Carter and the university’s Board of Trustees, based on recommendations by the faculty Committee on Tenure, Promotion, Reappointment, and Equal Employment Opportunity, approved the granting of tenure to Israel Del Toro, biology; Thelma Jiménez-Anglada, Spanish; Nancy Lin, art history; Rebecca Perry, music theory; Graham Sazama, chemistry; and Jesús Gregorio Smith, ethnic studies. All six will be promoted to associate professor at the start of the 2023-24 academic year.

“I am thrilled that these six colleagues have been awarded tenure,” said Peter Blitstein, provost and dean of faculty. “These distinguished faculty members, among whom are several teaching award winners and recipients of highly competitive federal grants, are the most diverse group of faculty to be tenured in Lawrence’s recent history and together represent the kind of teacher-scholars who make Lawrence a leading national liberal arts college and conservatory.”

Israel Del Toro

Del Toro came to Lawrence as an assistant professor of biology in 2016 after holding a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Copenhagen. An ecologist, his research emphasizes understanding the role that insects play in mediating ecosystem services.  Working primarily in urban ecosystems, he investigates questions of biodiversity management and conservation in greenspaces, largely focused on insect pollinators as important players in the urban landscape. 

Del Toro was awarded a prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) EAGER grant, is one of the originators of “No Mow May,” and was elected to the City of Appleton’s Common Council in 2022.

He received his Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2014.

Thelma Jiménez-Anglada

Jiménez-Anglada came to Lawrence in 2016 as an ACM Mellon Faculty Fellow and assistant professor of Spanish. A scholar of Latin American and Caribbean literature and culture, her scholarship and creative activity has been devoted to the literary and cultural production of late 20th and 21st centuries that have been re-imagined by the presence of narcocultures and narcotrafficking in Mexico and Central America. 

At Lawrence, Jiménez-Anglada has served on numerous search committees, organized an exhibit at the Wriston Art Galleries on the art of Central American migration, managed the Harrison Symposium, and currently serves as a Posse mentor.

She received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2017.

Nancy Lin

Lin came to Lawrence in 2016 as an assistant professor of art history. Her scholarship examines the medium of neo-traditional painting within the social and political context of imperial Japan and colonial Korea. She focuses on the ways in which modernism as an artistic movement and the dreams of a Pan-Asian future merged for Japanese and Korean artists as they sought to negotiate their new transnational identities in the early 20th century.

She has won awards at Lawrence for Excellence in Advising (2020) and Excellence in Teaching for an Early Career Faculty Member (2022). She has served on the First-Year Studies Advisory Committee, the Curriculum Committee, and presently is a member of the task force reviewing First-Year Studies.

Lin received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2015.

Rebecca Perry

Perry came to Lawrence as an assistant professor of music theory in 2017. Her research centers on early 20th-century adaptations of sonata form, particularly in Russia and France, with a special interest in the early compositions of Sergei Prokofiev.

A winner of the Excellence in Teaching Award for Early Career Faculty (2021), she has served on the Conservatory Advisory Committee, was the advisor for the BA in Music, and served on the group that revised the BA in Music program.

Perry received her Ph.D. from Yale University in 2017.

Graham Sazama

After a postdoctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sazama came to Lawrence as an assistant professor of chemistry in 2016. His research program bridges the fields of organic materials and inorganic chemistry. He and his students pursue the synthesis and study of luminescent organic radicals and investigate the properties of fascinating three-dimensional materials known as metal-organic frameworks. 

He has served on the Academic Advising Committee, which he currently chairs.

Sazama received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2013. 

Jesús Gregorio Smith

Smith came to Lawrence in 2017 as an assistant professor of ethnic studies and ACM Mellon Faculty Fellow. He studies how race and racism influence several aspects of social life including media, identity, partner preferences, education, emotions, and sexual health.

A winner of the Excellence in Teaching Award for an Early Career Faculty Member (2022), he has also won the Excellence in Higher Education Shining Star Award from the Fox Cities Chamber of Commerce. In 2020 he was awarded a Woodrow Wilson National Foundation Career Enhancement Award for Junior Faculty.  At Lawrence, he has been a leader in developing the ethnic studies major and serves as the chair of the DEI Convening Committee for 2022-2023.

Smith received his Ph.D. in 2017 from Texas A&M University.