Nine UNC Asheville faculty members from all across campus were granted tenure this year for their expertise, scholarship, dedication to students, and service to campus. They were also promoted to the rank of associate professor.
Christine Boone
Associate Professor of Music
Christine Boone teaches nine different courses across a wide range of areas, including a first-year seminar and a new course co-taught on Music and Math. Her students say they appreciate her care, humor and effectiveness, and that her “enthusiasm is infectious,” that she’s “absolutely incredible,” and one of her peers called her courses “masterly crafted and delivered.” She coordinates the music theory entrance exams, advises the Music Theory Club, serves on the Academic Appeals Board, Cultural Events Committee, and more.
Boone has produced two peer-reviewed articles, and a book chapter in the Handbook of Remix Studies and Digital Humanities, and more. Boone is also professionally active as a soprano soloist.
Susan Clark Muntean
Associate Professor of Management and Accountancy
Susan Clark Muntean is “highly innovative in her teaching,” as well as attentive, supportive and challenging, and has a deep commitment to undergraduate research mentoring and working with partners according to her peers. Though she is focused primarily in the management department, she’s also taught in the women, gender and sexuality studies program.
Clark Muntean has engaged in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) in addition to disciplinary work; and co-authored a book Entrepreneurial Ecosystems: A Gender Perspective to be published by Cambridge University Press. She received the Journal of Ethics and Entrepreneurship’s Best Paper in Ethics and Entrepreneurship award in 2017; and received the UNC Asheville Distinguished Scholarship Award in 2018.
Clark Muntean has served on the Vice Chancellor for Advancement Search Committee, Departmental Advisory Board, Faculty Senate, editorial board of the New England Journal of Entrepreneurship, and more.
Regine Criser
Chair and Associate Professor of Languages and Literatures, German
Regine Criser’s students say that she is organized, engaged and engaging, and dedicated. She is responsible for a complete redesign of the German curriculum at UNC Asheville, and has a substantial impact on the Humanities Program, Honors Program, and First Year Seminars. Criser coordinates the First Year Seminars, led the Prison Education Program, serves on Faculty Senate, and has led efforts to revamp the First Year Experience.
Criser is internationally and locally recognized for her teaching, having won the American Association of Teachers of German/Goethe-Institute Certificate of Merit for Outstanding Achievement in Furthering the Teaching of German in Schools of the United States in 2017 and the Award for Teaching Excellence here at UNC Asheville.
She has published five articles, several book reviews and been awarded a major grant, and co-edited Diversity and Decolonization in German Studies which was reviewed as having “the potential to transform the field.”
Alvis Dunn
Associate Professor of History
Alvis Dunn’s courses have been described as inspired, innovative and exciting. He has developed or assumed responsibility for a dozen courses, covering all aspects of the curriculum and contributing to First Year Seminars, Humanities Program at all levels, teacher licensure courses for social studies teachers, capstone courses, COPLAC distance education courses, and more. He adds to curriculum and scholarly profile of the University in important ways in exploring the cultural contributions of migrant communities and connecting the local and the global.
Dunn has published four single-authored articles/book chapters and two book reviews. He has been accepted into the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Institute, presides over a scholarly association; and more. He’s also served on the Faculty Grievance Committee, ADA Compliance Committee, worked on the Humanities Reader, and serves as president of the Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies.
Anne Jansen
Associate Professor of English
In addition to teaching nearly a dozen different courses in the English department, Anne Jansen has taught the academic writing and critical inquiry course, First Year Seminars, courses for the Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program and for the US Ethnic Studies Program. She’s also supervised nearly a dozen senior theses. She has incorporated service learning and mindfulness into courses, in one instance partnering with a local rape-crisis and sexual violence center.
Jansen leans into emotional discomfort and difficult topics in her courses, and is a critically important contributor to diversifying UNC Asheville’s curriculum. Her work uses a comparative approach to explore relationship between US ethnic literatures, race, social justice, politics of aesthetics, genre and literary form, with several articles, creative works, and book reviews published, and a monograph—Rupturing Realities: Literary Activism in Post-9/11 US Ethnic Genre Fiction—forthcoming.
Jansen has served at the Literature Club advisor, a diversity advocate, a Diversity Initiative coordinator and more. She also was nominated for Western Literature Association’s Don D. Walker Prize for best essay.
Sonia Kapur
Associate Professor or Interdisciplinary Studies, International Studies
Sonia Kapur’s teaching is described as “interdisciplinary, fearless, caring and responsive to the needs of her students.” She’s known for being both composed and able to inspire genuine enthusiasm in her students. Kapur has contributed to the Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, the Humanities Program, and First Year Seminars, and she has led students in study abroad. Kapur is an innovator in online teaching, connecting with students across the globe—to discuss circumstances of Tibetan refugees with students from the Central University of Tibetan Studies, for example.
Kapur addresses issues of diversity and global engagement, offering such courses as Nation-building, Identity and Diversity in South Asia to explore social, political, ethnic intersections and complexity. She seeks out and attends workshops internally and externally to continuously improve teaching.
Kapur is the author of five peer reviewed publications, and has recently submitted work exploring treatment of, violence against, international policies and economics governing women, domestic abuse, relationships.
She has served as a member of the Study Abroad Committee, Faculty Grievance Committee, and the Institutional Review Board.
Toby King
Associate Professor of Music
Toby King has taught over a dozen different courses at UNC Asheville, contributed to the Music Department and the Liberal Arts Core, and mentored nearly a dozen students undergraduate research projects. He is cited as adept at leading classes “through difficult and nuanced questions of race and appropriation” such as “African American banjo traditions in white Appalachian Blues.” He is known for being able to get students to open up, extract ideas, reflect, and understand while teaching in a supportive, deeply informed way with great musical breadth.
King began the Bluegrass Ensemble and the Afro Music and Dance Ensemble, added ethnomusicology courses to the music curriculum, redesigned the Western Music History course and refined and solidified the curriculum of the BA program.
King is recognized as an expert in bluegrass music performance practice both in WNC and abroad. He has served as performance coordinator in departmental and campus events; he is a Student Recital Committee member, serves on Faculty Senate, and is president of the regional chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology.
Brittani McNamee
Associate Professor of Environmental Studies
Brittani McNamee has taught eight courses at all levels including a First Year Seminar, diversity intensive course, and a summer travel course. Her students suggest she is a “magician of geology” given that her “enthusiasm for the subject is stellar,” “her passion…[is] contagious,” accessible, and they enjoy that courses are hands-on She is lauded for being well-organized, clear, skillful at the use of images and videos to enhance student learning, having an excellent rapport with students, and using real world examples.
McNamee’s work focuses on characterizing talc and associated minerals and mapping carcinogenic minerals, including asbestos. Her work is also focused on STEM education, working collaboratively with geologists, health scientists, engineers and other disciplinary experts.
McNamee has produced about half a dozen papers and presented at many conferences, often with students. She has served on Student Affairs Faculty Advisory Committee, Student Fees Committee, and is the primary caretaker of the Scanning Electron Microscope used by many at UNC Asheville and in the community.
Graham Reynolds
Associate Professor of Biology
Graham Reynolds teaches multi-section courses for majors, with large enrollments, offering challenging courses that are also highly rated by providing supportive, enthusiastic, expert instruction. He uses his research directly in classes to ensure relevancy, while deploying inquiry-based, active learning and citizen-science pedagogies that encourage students to think like scientists.
Reynolds has mentored dozens of students, over 85% from underrepresented groups, including nearly two dozen students conducting undergraduate research in Cayman Islands, Vietnam, and Turks and Caicos. He’s also supported students publishing nearly a dozen papers in scientific journals.
As the author of over 50 papers, including many published in the very best journals, such as Science and Evolution, his research is among the very best, working on “the evolutionary and ecological processes that influence…biodiversity.”
Graham has served as chair of the department, an AVID mentor, chair of University Research Council, Steering Committee for GEAR UP, UNC Asheville Foundation board member, and associate editor for six journals.
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