College of Charleston Welcomes New Faculty

The College of Charleston is proud to welcome its new faculty members, who’ve come from all over the world to teach, mentor and inspire students.

Over the fall semester, The College Today is introducing these Cougars to campus a few at a time – in no particular order – giving the CofC community the opportunity to get to know them all a little better. (The first in this series is on the Faculty & Staff News page.)

Please give a warm welcome to the faculty members in the second of this introductory series!

June Bloch
Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology

Background: I received my Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in 2020. I completed my postdoc at Brandeis University and taught at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta for the last four years. 

Expertise: My research combines archaeology, cultural anthropology and Indigenous studies. I focus on power and violence, social, memory, heritage, landscape, materiality, animacy, settler colonialism and the politics of identity.

Outside Interests: I garden, work leather and play rec sports. I’m looking forward to joining the local rugby team while I’m here.

Looking Forward: I’ll be teaching mainly introductory courses and I’m excited to work with students to build the foundations for grappling with power and violence as a function of social systems rather than good or bad individuals. 

Latasha Chaffin
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science

Background: I grew up in the Midwest, having roots in Michigan and Ohio. I earned my Ph.D. in Political Science from Western Michigan University. Most recently I was a faculty member in a history and political science department at a Midwestern community college. I previously taught in the political science department at CofC six years ago and I am glad to return, joining wonderful colleagues and teaching ambitious, goal-oriented students.

Expertise: My research interests are in diverse and equitable teaching and learning strategies and in the fields of American politics and public administration on examining public policy impacts on diverse and vulnerable populations, state politics and policy, political economy, minority politics and civic engagement efforts through higher education programs, including for individuals who are justice impacted and programs that support reentering citizens.

Outside Interests: I enjoy traveling, attending church and spending time with my family, including my young daughter.

Looking Forward: As a political scientist who studies American politics and public administration, I am excited to guide students in unpacking complex public problems and analyzing how the government, the nonprofit sector and the American people can work together to mitigate or alleviate social problems. 

Maximilian Gindorf
Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of German and Russian Studies

Background: I was born and raised in Germany and began my studies in comparative literature and philosophy at the Ruhr-University Bochum. It is a large university in the heart of the former industrial center of West Germany, and I have many fond memories of living there. When I arrived in the U.S. at the University of South Carolina in 2018, I immediately had the opportunity to teach German, and the curiosity and excitement that the students demonstrated toward German language and culture inspired me in return to focus on German in my M.A. and Ph.D. The opportunity to live in a different country has truly been a life-shaping experience for me. I am excited to share my story with our students and motivate them to be curious and courageous about the world out there.

Expertise: I wrote my dissertation on Ralph Waldo Emerson and Friedrich Nietzsche, being interested in the relation between German and American thinking, especially in the 19th and beginning 20th century. I am also interested in philosophy and literary theory. Right now, I am working on the long-forgotten tradition of German anarchist thought and I hope to teach a class on it soon.

Outside Interests: Of course, I enjoy reading a lot. But if I don’t read for research, I like to relax with a good novel and music. To even things out, I like to play badminton, tennis and table tennis (I have yet to try out pickleball!), and to work on my car when I find the time.

Looking Forward: I think the most exciting aspect about my courses is to see how students progress in learning a new language and become proficient navigating through a different culture. This semester, I am also teaching a class on borders in the German-speaking world, and we try to uncover some of the historical traces that German-speaking peoples left in Charleston.

Brady Haering
Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Accounting and Business Law

Background: I am a three-time graduate of the University of Oklahoma. I earned my BBA in Accounting in 2018, my MAcc in 2019 and my Ph.D. in 2024. I worked briefly as a forensic accounting intern with EY and signed on to work as a staff accountant, but decided to continue my education and pursue the Ph.D. instead.

Expertise: Methodologically I focus on experimental accounting work in several lines of focus. Specifically my current portfolio includes studies in forensic accounting and auditing. I am currently working to expand my portfolio to include studies on managerial accounting as well as diversity, social equity and bias.

Outside Interests: I am usually in the gym several days a week with a focus on weightlifting. I love to read, mostly novels, especially in the science fiction, horror and murder mystery genres. I spend a lot of time watching sports and am a lifelong and avid professional wrestling fan.

Looking Forward: I’m excited to teach Managerial Accounting because the concepts centered around internal judgment and decision making are applicable in all fields and businesses, and help build a strong foundation for all majors in the business school. I am also excited to teach Intermediate II to expand my teaching experience and engage with students focused on the accounting major.

James Holland
Adjunct Faculty, Department of Management and Marketing

Background: I am a Minneapolis and Chicago native. I received my master of science degree in advertising from Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois.
Professionally, my focus has been product management, new product development and channel marketing CPG.

Expertise: Product management, channel marketing and new product development

Outside Interests: Family, tennis and reading

Looking Forward: I look forward to teaching an intro marketing course to students, using the College’s built-in tools in tandem with my real-world experience should be a truly unique and rewarding experience. 

Kasey Jordan
Assistant Professor, Department of Health and Human Performance

Background: I am delighted to join the team at College of Charleston! I come to CofC with a background in health care and higher education. I am a registered nurse with practice experience in emergency and public health settings, particularly school health. In 2010, I took my first teaching position at a community college in North Carolina. Fascinated by the promise and challenge of innovative behaviors by colleagues and students, I pursued a Ph.D. with a focus on innovation management in public health from Vanderbilt University. After graduating, the experience of COVID led me to focus my interest in health care innovation management, specifically in the area of disaster resilience. Most recently, I worked as the lead faculty for undergraduate programs at the MUSC College of Nursing while I completed an additional M.A. in Emergency Management and Homeland Security. I’m looking forward to fully immersing myself in the health care disaster resilience space and serving as program director for the new Health Services Administration and Management program here at CofC.

Expertise: My area of interest is health care disaster resilience. I am especially interested in how health care administrators can promote positive patient and workforce outcomes in disaster through effective organizational adaptation. 

Outside Interests: I am at my happiest when I’m spending time with my family, which includes my husband Adam and two children, Addy and Byron. I also love exploring new places, whether through reading or by actually going to visit.

Looking Forward: Working to be sure that all people have access to compassionate, high-quality health care is incredibly meaningful to me, especially in the context of disruptive disaster events. I can’t wait to spend time exploring tough issues with students who will be the health care managers, leaders and changemakers of the future.

Celeste Joye
Adjunct Faculty, Department of Hispanic Studies

Background: I grew up here in Charleston. In fact, my mother taught Latin here at CofC in the 80s. I received my B.A. in Political Science and M.A. in Spanish Literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I studied in Madrid, Spain, for three years at the Universidad Complutense. NYC became my home after that for 20 years. I taught ESL at Hunter College and photography to students at Parsons School of Design. Returning to Charleston, I began teaching Spanish as a dual enrollment instructor at Oceanside Collegiate. This fall I’m very excited to be part of the amazing faculty at the College of Charleston. 

Expertise: I’m interested in the use of contemporary music and song in language acquisition and creating meaningful content within the culture curriculum.

Outside Interests: My two teenage children keep me pretty busy. My husband and I are soccer and volleyball parents and can be found trying to arrive at various gyms and fields on time. Photography is my main interest. I’m one of those rare people who still uses film and shoots with medium format plastic cameras. I created a photography camp program for teenagers, which I love teaching during the summer. I also spend time every week playing ukulele with my bandmate. I doubt we will ever play in front of a crowd, but we talk about our set list a lot.

Looking Forward: I’m very excited to teach Elementary Spanish Through Culture 1 (HISP 190) this fall. This is a fast Spanish immersion course tailored to first-year students with some prior study of the language. It’s the first leg of the language relay, and I’m determined to start my students with a sizable lead that is fueled by a genuine interest and connection to the subject. These classes are the PLACE TO BE because you get to know your classmates – their names, where they are from, what they like to do, what their future plans are, etc. One of my very best friends to this day is someone I met in Spanish class in college.

David Kay
Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Biology

Background: I received two bachelor of science degrees from Florida State University, one in biological sciences and one in geology. Then I received a master of science degree from FSU in biological science, with a focus on evolution and ecology. From there, I went on to earn my Ph.D. in Biomedical Science from Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences, in the anatomy and vertebrate paleontology track.

Expertise: I am a comparative evolutionary anatomist currently studying teeth to address the role of tissue mechanics in shaping phenotypes, particularly in socketed or thecodont dentitions. I apply quantitative methods such as shape analysis, micro-computed tomography reconstruction, multivariate statistics and materials and dental biomechanics across multiple domains – from sub-cellular to whole organisms – to address how teeth are shaped, particularly the role that tooth sockets play in enabling crown-functional morphologies. I leverage this framework to test hypotheses about the repeated evolution of complex dentitions using extant thecodonts (mammals and crocodylians) as a lens to understand macroevolutionary trends in the complex dental patterns of extant and extinct groups. I set up experiments contrasting simplistic dentitions with their more complex counterparts. This approach has enabled me to expand our understanding of dental concepts and probe assumptions about the effect of mechanical environment on anatomical development. 

Outside Interests: I like hiking, searching for fossils, playing music, reading, cooking turkeys, complaining and coding.

Looking Forward: Anatomy and Physiology Lab is an incredibly applicable course for many career paths. I am looking forward to helping students learn these concepts while tying them directly to their interests.

Kangkang Kovacs ’23 (M.F.A.)
Adjunct Faculty, Department of English

Background: I was born in Nanchang, a flavorful small city in southeast China. I hold a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Virginia and a M.F.A. in creative writing from the College of Charleston. My debut novel, Nothing to My Name, a family saga about three generations of women in China, is under contract with Viking Books at Penguin & Random House and Bloomsbury Publishing, UK. It is scheduled to be published in 2026. I live in Mount Pleasant with her husband, her twins and a goldendoodle named Bodhi.

Expertise: Creative writing, fiction

Outside Interests: Piano, paddleboarding, painting 

Looking Forward: I get to have open and mindful discussions with my students about literature in every aspect of our daily lives.

Shaon Lahiri
Assistant Professor, Department of Health and Human Performance

Background: I’m originally from India and grew up between there and the Sultanate of Oman, which is located in the Middle East. I received my undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor, a master of public health degree from Imperial College London and a Ph.D. in Social and Behavioral Sciences from the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Prior to coming to CofC, I was a postdoctoral researcher and fellow at the University of Pennsylvania in the great city of Philadelphia!  

Expertise: My expertise is in human behavior change with a focus on measuring and changing social norms to encourage healthy behaviors and decrease risky behaviors. My work is focused on understanding how our behavior is influenced by many factors, and trying to leverage some of those factors to decrease intimate partner violence, increase contraceptive use, reduce tobacco use and help people cope with the many obstacles of living in poverty.

Outside Interests: I am a big fan of live music and enjoy playing guitar. I’m especially excited to discover Charleston’s music scene, especially the best spots for seeing live jazz. Also, anything related to culture, languages and food is always attractive to me. 

Looking Forward: I’ll be teaching a course on health promotion program planning and evaluation. In my (admittedly biased) view, the most important thing in the world is health – of humans, animals, ecosystems and the planet. We have to contend with increasing stresses of climate change on our world, including dealing with pandemics and infodemics. I am most excited about equipping my students with skills to deal with the world’s greatest challenges by bridging rigorous theory with careful empiricism. The stakes could not be any higher!

Kathryn Pedings-Behling ’08 (M.S. ’12)
Instructor, Department of Mathematics

Background: I have my B.S. in Mathematics and Secondary Education from the College of Charleston and my M.S. in Mathematics from the College of Charleston. I am currently working on my Ed.D. in Educational Practice and Innovation with a concentration in STEM education.

I am starting my 17th year as a mathematics educator. I have taught in high school, written curriculum for STEM teacher professional development and summer camps, and been an adjunct at the College of Charleston for the past five years. 

Expertise: I am very interested in the postsecondary group of students who would consider themselves to be “not a math person” and often take the last math course they will ever take in their lives. What can we do in those courses to impact their own math identity that may, in turn, affect future generations? I am particularly interested in this question from the aspect of curriculum. 

Outside Interests: I have three children – a 4-year-old and 8-year-old twins. We enjoy traveling, most recently to the San Diego area. I’ve loved introducing my twins to the world of Harry Potter; we are currently reading the third book. I coach my daughter’s softball team.

I am currently on the board for the local Lowcountry Parents of Multiples, which helps support other families who have twins or triplets (or higher order multiples). It can be a big shock to a person’s life to not just have one baby but have multiple at a time.

I really enjoy reading for fun. I often attend multiple book clubs in a month and love hearing other people’s perspectives on the literature. 

Looking Forward: One of the courses I’ll be teaching this fall is Business Calculus. For that course, I use a textbook co-written by my colleague, Amy Langville, and myself. I have enjoyed working over the past five years to take student feedback and improve the book and the online OAKS experience for them. I’m excited about another iteration of that course with students and their feedback. 

Julia Pruin
Visiting Assistant Instructor, Department of Psychology

Background: I have my bachelor’s degree from Texas State and my master’s degree from University of Chicago. I was previously teaching at University of Chicago, also in psychology

Expertise: Cognitive neuroscience – attention and memory interactions

Outside Interests: Baking and cooking, hiking and travel

Looking Forward: Getting to share my passion for research with students

Brian Rego
Adjunct Faculty, Department of Studio Art

Background: I am originally from Santa Clara, California, but most recently Columbia, South Carolina. I received my B.F.A. from the University of South Carolina in 2004 and my M.F.A. from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2007. In 2008, I co-founded a painting collective known as Perceptual Painters that emphasized painting, community and education. In 2015, I co-founded the Midlands School of Art, which served students from Columbia and the surrounding Midlands to teach classical systems of painting and drawing as the foundation for working from observation. For the past five years, I have been painting and exhibiting full time, though, before that, I taught painting and drawing for numerous schools and universities such as the University of South Carolina, Mississippi University, Mount Gretna School of Art, the Jerusalem Studio School and Art New England. 

Expertise: I am interested in the phenomenology of sight and the influence cognitive assumptions (made concerning the direct experience of objects) have on visual language throughout the history of painting. 

Outside Interests: I am a father of four children, so my hobbies and interests range far and wide to connect with them. I have always enjoyed writing and playing music. I also like chess.

Looking Forward: I am most excited about helping the students contextualize the figure as a subject in painting, and to observe their work as a result.

Tingting Tong
Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics

Background: I began my academic journey at Qingdao University, where I earned my B.S. in Mathematics and Applied Mathematics. My pursuit of advanced studies led me to achieve two M.S. degrees: one in applied statistics from Qingdao University and another in mathematical statistics from New Mexico State University. This past May, I completed my Ph.D. in Mathematical Statistics at New Mexico State University, where I gained valuable experience teaching various classes and conducting research.

Outside Interests: In my free time, I like to watch movies, hike and explore new places.

Looking Forward: This fall semester, I am excited to teach Statistical Method I. Teaching this course aligns with my passion for statistics and allows me to share my love for the subject with my students. I look forward to inspiring students with the applications and beauty of statistical methods.