Seventeen Maxwell School faculty members have new titles in the 2025-26 academic year due to promotions. The Syracuse University Board of Trustees has granted tenure to eight of them in their advancement from assistant to associate professor: Johannes Himmelreich, Ryan Monarch, Miriam Mutambudzi, Andre Ortega, Ying Shi, Robert Terrell, Emily Thorson and Baobao Zhang.

“We congratulate these Maxwell faculty members,” says Dean David M. Van Slyke. “These promotions are well-deserved, as they are outstanding teachers, researchers and mentors, and they effectively use their evidence-based scholarship to also shape policy dialogue and decision making for the greater public good. We are proud of their contributions to the University and to public service.”

Himmelreich, associate professor of public administration and international affairs, is a senior research associate for the Autonomous Systems Policy Institute and the Campbell Public Affairs Institute. His work focuses on the ethics and policy of using artificial intelligence for government and within public spaces, such as in drones, self-driving cars or in the administration of social benefit systems. He is co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of AI Governance (Oxford University Press, 2024), which examines the challenges and opportunities at the intersection of AI and governance. With the support of a two-year grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, he is working on a book about the philosophy and ethics of data science and good decision-making. He has been recognized with the Best Research Paper Award at the annual International Conference on Digital Government Research and with the 2022 Camilla Stivers Award for best article from Perspectives on Public Management and Governance. He also received Maxwell’s Birkhead-Burkhead Award for Teaching Excellence in 2022. Himmelreich received a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2016.

Monarch, associate professor of economics, is the director of the Trade, Development, and Political Economy Working Group. He studies U.S.-China trade, buyer-supplier relationships in international trade and how the recent tariff war affects U.S. exports and supply chains. His research has been published in the Journal of International Economics–the top journal in international economics–and multiple other economics journals. In recent months, Monarch has been interviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, CNN, Newsweek, the South China Morning Post, the New York Post, Spectrum TV, NPR, The Motley Fool and other outlets. His recent research project, “Trade Shocks and U.S. Firms' Global Supply Chains” was sponsored by the National Bureau of Economic Research. He received the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Award for Teaching and Research from Maxwell in 2025, and the Appleby-Mosher Grant from Syracuse University in 2023. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 2014.

Mutambudzi, associate professor of public health, is a research affiliate for the Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion and Population Health, the Aging Studies Institute and the Center for Aging and Policy Studies. She researches the social determinants of health. Her work has been supported by organizations such as the Met Life Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, which last year awarded her a grant to conduct a two-year study on the effect of the 2007-09 Great Recession on older adults. Mutambudzi’s work has been published in journals such as The Gerontologist, Aging & Mental Health and the Journal of Aging and Health. Syracuse University named her the 2024-26 Lender Center for Social Justice Faculty Fellow; along with students, she is exploring how Black adults who reside in historically redlined neighborhoods can experience a disadvantaged occupational life course and subsequent health consequences. In 2021, she was named a Health Disparities Research Institute Scholar by the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities, and she received the Adolph Kammer Authorship Award from the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine in 2020. She received a Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut in 2012

Ortega, associate professor of geography and the environment, is a faculty affiliate for Community Geography. His research focuses on the intersection of urban, population and community geographies. Ortega examines the spatial politics of urbanization in the cities of the Global South, interlinking urban transformations with transnational mobilities of migrants, and urban transformations in the Philippines. His recent work has been supported by the American Council for Learned Societies, the Regional Studies Association and the Urban Studies Foundation. His articles have appeared in journals such as the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Urban Geography, Cities and Geoforum. His book, Neoliberalizing Spaces in the Philippines: Suburbanization, Transnational Migration, and Dispossession (Lexington Press, 2016), examined the spatial contradictions of suburban development in Manila and the transnational mobilities of overseas Filipinos and won the 2018 Institute of Philippine Culture Award for Best Global Research About the Philippines and the 2017 Philippine Social Science Council Virginia A. Miralao Excellence in Research Award. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 2012.

Shi, associate professor of public administration and international affairs, is an O’Hanley Faculty Scholar, a senior research associate for the Center for Policy Research and a research affiliate for the Campbell Public Affairs Institute. Shi examines racial inequality and education policy. Her research has been published in numerous journals including the Journal of Public Economics, the Journal of Human Resources, and Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, and her work has been supported by the William T. Grant Foundation as well as other organizations. She was principal investigator on a Grant Foundation-funded project from 2021-23 titled “Long-Term Consequences of the Voting Rights Act for Black-White Disparities in Children’s Later-Life Outcomes.” Last year, Shi was named a William T. Grant Scholar and received a $350,000 award to explore Asian American students’ exposure to victimization and hate crimes in school. Shi received a Ph.D. from Duke University in 2017.

Terrell, associate professor of history, is a senior research associate for the Center for European Studies. His areas of expertise are modern Germany and Europe, commodity and food history, global and transnational history, and the history of Islam and Muslims in Europe. His first book, A Nation Fermented: Beer, Bavaria, and the Making of Modern Germany (Oxford University Press, 2024), examines how Bavarian brewers, regulators and cultural intermediaries shaped the structures and discourses of the German nation in the twentieth century. Terrell is a co-organizer of the Central New York Humanities Corridor Working Group: Research and Narrative in Modern European History and the faculty advisor for the student-run history journal CHRONOS. He received a Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego in 2018.

Thorson, associate professor of political science, is a senior research associate for the Campbell Public Affairs Institute. Her research focuses on how information and misinformation shape citizen attitudes and behavior in U.S. politics. Her books The Invented State: Policy Misperceptions in the American Public (Oxford University Press, 2024) and How News Coverage of Misinformation Shapes Perceptions and Trust (Cambridge University Press, 2024) analyze how the media addresses the issue of misinformation and how such coverage shapes public perception and trust. Her work has been published in major journals such as the American Political Science Review, the British Journal of Political Science, Nature, and Science. She received the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Award for Teaching and Research from Maxwell in 2024 and has received research funding and support from the Knight Foundation and other organizations. She received a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2013.

Zhang, associate professor of political science and Maxwell Dean Associate Professor of the Politics of AI, is a senior research associate for the Autonomous Systems Policy Institute and the Campbell Public Affairs Institute. Her research examines trust in digital technology and the governance of artificial intelligence. She led a major research project supported by the Ethics and Governance of AI Fund and she was named an AI2050 Early Career Fellow by Schmidt Futures. In addition, she received the 2023-24 Public Voices Fellowship on Technology in the Public Interest and was recently awarded a National Science Foundation grant to study how generative AI is reshaping the American workplace, focusing on its impacts on worker productivity, job satisfaction and skill development. Her research has been published in numerous journals, including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Nature Human Behavior, and she has co-edited the Oxford Handbook of AI Governance. In 2023, she won the Assessing Risks and Impacts of AI Red-teaming Competition at the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology. Zhang received a Ph.D. from Yale University in 2020.

Additionally, Azra Hromadžić, Scott Landes, Amy Lutz, Gladys McCormick, Margaret Susan Thompson and Emily Wiemers have been promoted from associate to full professor.

Hromadžić, professor and undergraduate director of anthropology, is a Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professor for Teaching Excellence, faculty affiliate for the Aging Studies Institute and a senior research associate for the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration and the Center for European Studies. Her research interests include the anthropology of international policy in postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina and war ecologies. Hromadžić received the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Award for Teaching and Research, the Excellence in Graduate Education Faculty Recognition Award and Dr. Ralph E. Montonna Professorship for the Teaching and Education of Undergraduates. Her work has been supported with funding from Fulbright, the American Councils for International Education, the U.S. Department of State, and the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research among other organizations. Her latest book, Riverine Citizenship: A Bosnian City in Love with the River (CEU Press, 2024), explores how residents of a town in northwest Bosnia mobilized to block construction of a hydroelectric dam on the Una River in 2015. She received a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2009.

Landes, professor of sociology, is also a faculty associate for the Aging Studies Institute and a research affiliate for the Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion and Population Health and the Center for Aging and Policy Studies. His research focuses on health and mortality trends for disabled people and veterans and addresses the intersections of disability and social theory. Landes received the 2025 Excellence in Graduate Education Faculty Recognition Award and the Excellence in Research Award in the annual Integrated Public Use Microdata Series competition for his co-authored paper, “Counting Disability in the National Health Interview Survey and its Consequence: Comparing the American Community Survey to the Washington Group Disability Measures” (Disability and Health Journal, 2024). His research has been sponsored by numerous grants from the National Institutes of Health and other organizations. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Florida in 2014.

Lutz, professor of sociology, is the director of the Social Science Ph.D. Program and a senior research associate for the Center for Policy Research. Her current research centers around the children of immigrants, families and educational inequalities. Lutz recently coauthored a book on mothering during the COVID-19 pandemic, Mothering in the Time of Coronavirus (University of Massachusetts Press, 2025). She served as principal investigator under a Russell Sage Foundation Grant for her research, “Immigrants and Children of Immigrants in the US Military.” Her research has been supported by several grants and foundations including the Appleby-Mosher Fund, the Russell Sage Foundation and the National Science Foundation. She received a Ph.D. from the University at Albany, State University of New York, in 2002.

Thompson, professor of history and political science, is a senior research associate for the Campbell Public Affairs Institute and the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration. Her research interests include modern American history, government and politics, religion, and women's history. She has spoken internationally as well as across the U.S. and has served as a consultant to numerous documentarians and religious communities. Her upcoming book, Service and Sisterhood: American Nuns in the Long Nineteenth Century, is under contract with Oxford University Press. Thompson has received research grants from the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities and she is a former American Political Science Congressional Fellow and an American Historical Association J. Franklin Jameson Fellow. She received a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1979.

McCormick, professor of history, associate dean, and Jay and Debe Moskowitz Endowed Chair in Mexico-U.S. Relations, is a senior research associate for the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration, and an advisory board member and senior research associate for the Program on Latin America and the Caribbean. Her research interests include the political and economic history of Latin America and the Caribbean, corruption, drug trafficking and political violence. Her book The Last Door: A History of Torture in Mexico's War against Subversives (University of California Press, 2025) explores how the Mexican government increasingly used torture to suppress dissent as guerrilla movements spread across Mexico in the 1970s. She received the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Award for Teaching and Research from Maxwell in 2017 and the Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Teaching Recognition Award from Syracuse University in 2014. She received a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 2009.

Wiemers, professor and director of doctoral studies for the Public Administration and International Affairs Department, is also the Maxwell Dean Professor of Aging, Demography and Public Policy, a faculty associate for the Aging Studies Institute and a research affiliate for the Center for Policy Research and the Center for Aging and Policy Studies. Her research examines intergenerational ties and economic well-being across the life course, focusing on the impact of health and disability on earnings instability. She is a recipient of research grants from the National Institute on Aging, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. Wiemers’ research has been published in journals such as Demography, Population Development Review, The Gerontologist and Review of Economics of the Household. She received a Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2009.

Recently promoted faculty also include alumnus Zach Huitink ’17 Ph.D. (PA); he is now an associate teaching professor for the Public Administration and International Affairs Department. He is a Meredith Professor Faculty Fellow and serves as a senior research associate for the Campbell Public Affairs Institute and a research affiliate for the Center for Policy Design and Governance. His work focuses on national defense, homeland security and veterans’ affairs, more specifically, defense acquisition and contracting practices; public-private partnerships in homeland security and cybersecurity; veterans’ employment, skill building and human capital management; and implementation of organizational change in large public sector enterprises. Huitink’s research has been published in the Journal of Strategic Contracting and Negotiation, and he co-authored a chapter titled “Contracting in Pursuit of Public Purposes” in The Handbook of Public Administration (Jossey-Bass, 2015). He previously served as the inaugural D'Aniello Family Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Veterans and Military Families.

And, two faculty members from the Public Health Department—which recently transitioned to Maxwell from the Falk College of Sport—have been promoted: Ignatius N. Ijere and Lisa Olson-Gugerty join the school as teaching professors.

Ijere serves as the undergraduate director of the Public Health Department and is a clinical psychologist with expertise in community mental health, addiction and co-occurring disorders. As a Carnegie African Diaspora Fellow, he has developed an online graduate curriculum in addiction management that has been implemented at various universities across Africa. He is a member of the International Society of Substance Use Professionals, serves on the board member of the Nigerian Mental Health Practitioners USA and on the editorial boards of the Madridge Journal of AIDS and the International Journal of Prevention and Treatment of Substance Abuse Disorders. He is also a member of the Mental Health Innovation Network, the International Consortium of Universities for Drug Demand Reduction, and the Illinois Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse Professional Certification Association. His research has been published in several journals, including the International Journal of Addiction Research, Adiktologie, the International Journal of Migration and Global Studies, and the Journal of Behavioral Sciences and Psychology. He earned his Psy.D. from Argosy University in 2015.

Olson-Gugerty teaches courses such as Community Health Promotion, Human Health & Disease and Introduction to Healthcare Management, is a family nurse practitioner and serves as an emergency health care provider at a regional community health care center. Her work has been published in Surgery & Case Studies: Open Access Journal. She received a DHSc from Nova Southern University in 2005

By Mikayla Melo