USF Makes 30 Faculty Appointments
USF has hired 20 new faculty for the coming academic year. Of those, 12 are tenure-track and eight are term appointments. An additional eight adjunct faculty were given term appointments and two term faculty were made tenure-track. Of the total 30 appointments, 24 were made in the College of Arts and Sciences, three were made in the College of Professional Studies, and three in the School of Education.
Several new hires are coming to USF from appointments at other universities. Tracy Benning, an environmental studies appointment, was most recently at UC Berkeley as was Kenneth Miller, in political science. Manuel Vargas, in philosophy, comes from Stanford and Marco Jacquemet, who will teach communication studies, was an assistant professor at Barnard College in New York. Bruce Heiman, a business professor, was last teaching at the Universiteit Maastricht in the Netherlands. Victor Squitieri, also in communication studies, comes from UC Davis.
Joshua Gamson, who is joining the sociology department after nine years at Yale University, has focused on the sociology of culture, with an emphasis on contemporary Western commercial culture and mass media, including the history, theory, and sociology of sexuality. In the fall, Gamson will teach Sex and Sexualities and Sociology of Culture. Gamson said he left Yale for USF because of the people and the mission of the university.
“I found the people I met (faculty and students) on my visit here very warm, open, smart, and funny, so USF appealed on that level immediately,” he said. “There seems like there's a lot of support here for people to do whatever it is they do best and are most excited by. I also decided to come because I saw USF as a place that took both teaching and scholarship seriously, and where social justice values are not just tolerated but encouraged and implemented.”
Manuel Vargas is joining the philosophy department as an assistant professor. He fills the position vacated more than a year ago by Eduardo Mendieta, who Vargas considers to be his mentor. Both are scholars of Latin American philosophy. Vargas received his doctorate in philosophy from Stanford, where he taught last year. Vargas will teach Latin American philosophy in the spring.
“This is something that interested me in this job at USF—getting to do what I love,” he said. 
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