U. hires two new senior profs

Spring is here, and the school year is beginning to wind down.

But that's not the case for the competitive hiring process of new professors, a year-long academic hunting season that is most intense in the spring.

School of Arts and Sciences Dean Samuel Preston, who oversees the hiring process, said he anticipates hiring about 30 new faculty for the academic year 2002-2003.

Not only is that number an increase from last year's 27 new faculty, but it will also be the largest number of faculty hired in a decade -- if the University succeeds in its recruiting efforts.

Preston said one factor in Penn's increasing appeal and ability to lure first rate faculty to campus is its recent climb in the US News & World Report rankings. In the latest rankings released last September, Penn was rated one of the top five private universities for the first time in the history of the rankings.

"Faculty like to teach at places where students are outstanding -- both undergraduate and graduate students," Preston said. "So it's a self-perpetuating process. Faculty get better, so students get better, and as students get better, so do the faculty."

"We're competing on an equal footing for faculty with every other institution in the country," Preston added. "We are in the peak of the hiring season and are doing quite well at this point."

To date, Preston has released the names of two major hires of senior professors from other universities who will arrive at Penn for the 2002-2003 academic year. Amy Kaplan of Mount Holyoke College will join the English Department, and Junhyong Kim, a professor of evolutionary ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale, will become the newest addition to Penn's Biology Department, once the hirings are finalized.

Kim is an expert in computational biology -- a growing area of science that applies computer technology and mathematics to solving biological problems. Penn was one of the leaders in promoting computational biology even before the field started to pick up speed -- one of the motivations for Kim to leave Yale for Penn.

"This is a fairly new area in biology, but Penn has had a very strong department in computational biology for longer than most institutions," Kim said. "It's one of the premier places to do this work."

At Penn, Kim will focus on genomics computational biology.

"It's an extremely competitive area, and we're just thrilled that he's joining us," Preston said.

Another factor in Kim's decision to change locations is the new Life Sciences Building currently in development at Penn. Kim said he believes the decision to build the state-of-the-art facility shows the University's commitment to the biological sciences in general.

And Biology Department Chairman Andrew Binns said Penn could not have recruited Kim had it not been for the lure of the new Life Sciences Building, which will eventually house the Biology and Psychology departments, as well as part of the Genomics Institute.

Binns, citing the recent sequencing of the human genome and the staggering amount of data it produced, said new mathematic and computational methods are needed to shed insight on the meaning of that data.

"Kim is one of the young stars in this area," Binns said. "He is both a renowned researcher in this field and a renowned teacher in this field. We're looking forward to his contributions in both endeavors."

Kaplan, one of the most distinguished American Studies scholars in the United States, focuses on all of the regions that comprise the Americas -- not just the U.S. -- and the body of literature it produces.

Soon after Kaplan agreed to come to Penn, she was elected the president of the American Studies Association -- a prestigious position, since the organization has roughly 5,000 members from around the world.

Kaplan also has a major new book being published by Harvard University Press, which prompted English Department Chairman David Wallace to say that Penn has hired her "just at the moment of her emergence."

"It will give her a great new boost in visibility just as she arrives at Penn," Wallace said. "The Penn students will get her during her best and most creative years."

For all of their hires, SAS continues to emphasize the six departments identified in the school's strategic plan, which are Biology, Economics, English, History, Political Science and Psychology. Preston said there will be important hires in all of those departments this spring.

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