UW Bothell welcomes new faculty members for the 2019-20 school year.
School of Business
Wei Li, assistant professor
Li has been a senior lecturer, teaching accounting at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and has research interest in financial reporting and disclosure. Li received a doctorate in accounting from Carnegie Mellon University.
Afif Nassif, lecturer full-time
Nassif has been an assistant professor of management at the University of Windsor, interested in teaching organizational behavior. Afif received a doctorate in business administration from McMaster University and also worked as a consultant on health care reform projects.
School of Educational Studies
Yue Bian, associate professor
Bian recently received a doctorate from Michigan State University in curriculum, instruction and teacher education. A native speaker of Chinese, Bian also was the program coordinator for the university’s Chinese Teacher Certification Program. Bian also has experience teaching English as a foreign language.
Tyson Marsh, associate professor
Marsh comes from Seattle University where he was an associate professor and director of the Educational Administration Program. Marsh will teach in the Leadership Development for Educators (LEDE) Program, which develops school principals and other leaders. Marsh was an undergraduate at the UW in Seattle and received a doctorate in urban schooling from UCLA.
Natasha Merchant, assistant professor
Already familiar with the UW Bothell campus, Merchant taught in the Project for Interdisciplinary Pedagogy Fellowship, under the mentorship of Professor Wayne Au. Merchant received a doctorate from the UW in curriculum and instruction and has been an assistant professor at the University of North Georgia.
Sarah Beth Shear, assistant professor
Shear received a doctorate in learning, teaching and curriculum from the University of Missouri and has been an assistant professor in social studies education at Pennsylvania State University-Altoona. Shear has researched the presentation of indigenous peoples in U.S. history standards.
School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences
Ching-In Chen, assistant professor
Chen’s book “recombinant,” inspired by the global history of Asian laborers, won a Lambda Literary Award for transgender poetry. Chen received a doctorate in English from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and has been an assistant professor in the English Department at Sam Houston State University.
Joseph Ferrare, assistant professor
Ferrare received a doctorate in curriculum theory and research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has been an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Policy Studies & Evaluation at the University of Kentucky. Ferrare is interested in implementing data visualization techniques to represent social processes.
Enrique Reynoso, lecturer full-time
With a doctorate from Purdue University in English, Reynoso has been an assistant professor of English writing at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. Reynoso has taught technical, business and news writing.
Neil Simpkins, assistant professor
Simpkins recently received a doctorate in English from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with research into improving access for disabled students. Experienced in teaching composition, Simpkins also served as the university’s writing center assistant director.
Caleb Trujillo, assistant professor
After receiving his doctorate in biology from Purdue, Trujillo conducted research at Michigan State University in undergraduate biology education. Trujillo also was a board member of the Purdue chapter of the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science.
Ashley Velazquez, assistant professor
Velázquez received a doctorate from Purdue in second language studies / English as a second language, specializing in rhetoric and composition. Velazquez has taught international students, tutored refugees from the Republic of Congo and taught English in Japan.
Read more about the new IAS faculty here.
School of Nursing & Health Studies
Jason Daniel-Ulloa, lecturer full-time
Daniel-Ulloa received a doctorate in public health in a joint program at San Diego State University and the University of California San Diego. Daniel-Ulloa has been a clinical assistant professor at the University of Washington in Seattle in the Community Oriented Public Health Practice program and previously taught at the University of Iowa.
Kosuke Niitsu, assistant professor
Niitsu received a doctorate in psychiatric mental health nursing at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. Bilingual in English and Japanese, Niitsu became interested in psychological resistance after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
School of Science, Technology, Engineering & Math
Sharon A. Jones, professor, Division of Engineering & Mathematics
Jones received a doctorate from Carnegie Mellon University in engineering and public policy and has been dean of the Shiley School of Engineering at the University of Portland. Jones is UW Bothell’s new vice chancellor for academic affairs.
Sunwoong Kim, assistant professor, Division of Engineering & Mathematics
After receiving a doctorate in electrical engineering and computer science at Seoul National University in South Korea, Kim was a research associate in computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Afra Mashhadi, assistant professor, Division of Computing & Software Systems
Mashhadi has worked as a research scientist at UN Global Pulse Labs and at the e-Science Institute at the UW in Seattle. Mashhadi received a doctorate in computer science from University College London with research focused on predicting human behavior using “digital traces.”
Rachel E. Scherr, assistant professor, Division of Physical Sciences
Scherr received a doctorate in physics from the UW in Seattle and has worked as a senior research scientist at Seattle Pacific University. Scherr researches physics education.
