Seven distinguished faculty members recently were appointed to endowed professorships that will support their professional growth and research endeavors.
Provost Jeff Bowman said the selections help express admiration and respect for the extraordinary contributions that each faculty member has made to the College. Such endowed positions — which provide compensation and other support — play a key role in attracting, retaining and developing top talent.
“The new incumbents of these endowed chairs are remarkable scholars, artists and teachers. We are very fortunate to have them at Kenyon,” Bowman said. “It is a real pleasure to be able to support and celebrate the work of our faculty with endowed professorships.”
The following faculty members became new holders of endowed positions beginning on July 1.
Bruce L. Gensemer Professorship of Economics
Professor of Economics Galina An
Galina An, who joined Kenyon in 2004, teaches a variety of economics courses and contributes to a number of journals. Her research interests include international economics, development economics, economics of migration, housing markets and economies in transition.
Born in the former Soviet Union republic of Kazakhstan, she began her college studies focused on the mechanics of fluids and gases and initially worked modeling dynamic processes in internal combustion engines using computer programs. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, An became interested in economics and received a scholarship from the U.S. Agency for International Development to study in the United States. She has a bachelor of science in applied mathematics and mechanics from Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, a master of arts in economics from the Kazakhstan Institute of Management, Economics and Strategic Research, and a master of arts and doctorate in economics from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
The Bruce L. Gensemer Professorship in Economics was established in 2005, through a generous gift from John C. Riazzi, Class of 1985, a former student, in honor of Bruce L. Gensemer, who inspired Riazzi to pursue goals without limit and to reach beyond common expectations. As a Kenyon professor, Bruce Gensemer could see talents in students that they did not see in themselves and nurtured those abilities not readily evident from known or existing credentials. The professorship supports and honors an exceptional faculty member in Kenyon's Department of Economics.
Davidson Family Professorship of English Literature
Professor of English Sergei Lobanov-Rostovsky
Sergei Lobanov-Rostovsky has been at Kenyon since 1993 and teaches courses on Shakespeare, Renaissance poetry, film and creative writing. An associate editor of the Kenyon Review, he received a Trustee Teaching Excellence Award in 2001, and from 2015-2018, he was Kenyon’s National Endowment for the Humanities Professor of English, developing a series of workshops on literary science writing in collaboration with Professor of Biology Chris Gillen. He has also published a series of crime novels under the pseudonym Kenneth Abel.
Lobanov-Rostovsky received a bachelor of arts in English from Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge, a master of arts in creative writing from Stanford University, and a master of arts and doctorate in English from Harvard University.
Established in 2025 by the Davidson Family, this professorship supports and recognizes a tenured senior faculty member in the Department of English who demonstrates excellence in teaching and a commitment to Kenyon. Preference is given to one whose primary teaching responsibilities are in pre-modern literature, especially major British authors such as Shakespeare, Milton or Chaucer.
Harry M. Clor Professorship of Political Science
Professor of Political Science David Rowe
David Rowe, who joined the College in 2001, teaches political economy, comparative politics and international relations. He developed a nationally recognized course on terrorism after the Sept. 11 attacks, and his recent research explores the implications of Russia’s war on Ukraine for transatlantic security and global order.
A former director of Kenyon’s international studies program, Rowe held the R. Todd Ruppert Chair for International Studies from 2010-2012. In 2022-23, he held the Fulbright-NATO Security Studies Fellowship in Brussels, and in 2009, he held the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Innsbruck. Other awards include a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in International Peace and Security and grants from the Pew Memorial Trust and the National Science Foundation.
Rowe has been a fellow at the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University, served as executive director of the Aspen Strategy Group, and worked for the U.S. Department of Defense. He holds a bachelor of arts in German from Davidson College, a master of arts from the School of Advanced International Studies at John Hopkins University, and a doctorate in political science from Duke University.
The Harry M. Clor Professorship in Political Science was established in 1998 through generous gifts from grateful former students of Harry M. Clor, scholar and Kenyon professor of political science for 34 years, author and editor, advisor to colleagues and to national organizations. The Clor Professorship supports and recognizes an exceptional faculty member in the College's Department of Political Science.
James D. and Cornelia W. Ireland Professorship of Music
Professor of Music Benjamin R. Locke
Benjamin R. Locke, who became part of the College community in 1984, directs the Kenyon College Chamber Singers — a select group of student performers — as well as the Kenyon Community Choir, a large chorus consisting of students, faculty, staff and community members, and the Knox County Symphony. Known as the face of many public musical events on campus, such as New Student Sing and Senior Sing, Locke also edited an updated version of the College’s official songbook that was released in 2024. He was a recipient of the College's Trustee Award for Distinguished Teaching (now known as the Trustee Teaching Excellence Award) in 1992.
Locke's research has involved learning about both classical and folk musics of South Africa, which included transcribing the folk music into modern notation so that it could be performed by American choirs. Several of these transcriptions have been added to the official archives of indigenous music of the South African Musical Rights Organization. He currently is returning to his deep interest in analyzing the choral music of Johannes Brahms, utilizing his training in Schenkerian theory to reveal hidden structures that could directly influence performance decisions. Locke has a bachelor of music from Mary Manse College in Toledo and a masters and doctorate in choral conducting from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
The Ireland Professorship in Music encourages a fuller appreciation for the richness and importance of music at Kenyon and in the human experience. It was established in 1998 through the generous gift of former trustee Cornelia Ireland Hallinan ’76 H’91; her husband, Robert E. Hallinan ’74; and the trustees of the Elizabeth R. and William G. Mather Fund.
National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Distinguished Teaching Associate Professorship of Sociology
Associate Professor of Sociology Celso Villegas
Celso Villegas, who came to Kenyon in 2011 as the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in International Studies, is trained in comparative-historical analysis. He’s published on middle-class formation and democracy in the Philippines, Ecuador and Venezuela. His current research expands on the theme of democratic change through the lens of cultural sociology: the meanings of social class, ritual and political performance in U.S. politics, and civil sphere theory around the world. He has served the American Journal of Cultural Sociology as book reviews and associate editor since 2022.
Villegas’s project as part of this professorship is focused on how to provide intellectual resources to students and others on how to read each other faithfully instead of suspiciously and to find joy and surprise in the social world. He has a bachelor of arts in sociology from Connecticut College and a master of arts and doctorate in sociology from Brown University.
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Distinguished Teaching Professor honors a member of Kenyon’s humanities faculty who has displayed excellence in teaching and has developed a compelling vision of how the professorship would enhance the study of the humanities at the College. It is funded by an endowment created by a grant from the NEH and gifts from friends of Kenyon.
William P. Rice Associate Professorship of Literature
Associate Professor of English Orchid Tierney
Orchid Tierney, who joined the College in 2019, has focused her scholarship on critical discard studies, plant studies, atmospheric aesthetics, and ecopoetics. She is the author of “this abattoir is a college” (2025) and “a year of misreading the wildcats” (2019) as well as several chapbooks, including “pedagogies for the planthroposcene” (2025). Tierney, who served as co-editor of “The Routledge Companion to Ecopoetics” (2023), is co-director of the Science and Nature Writing initiative at Kenyon, a senior editor for the Kenyon Review, and a Black Earth Institute Fellow for 2022-2025.
She has a bachelor of arts in history and English from the University of Otago in New Zealand, a master of creative writing from the University of Auckland, a master of arts in English from the University of Otago, and a doctorate in English from the University of Pennsylvania.
The William P. Rice Professorship supports a professor who teaches literature in the department of English, modern languages and literature or classics. It honors a promising scholar whose work in publications, research or teaching exemplifies excellence in their discipline. It was established in 2011 by William P. Rice '66.
Robert A. Oden, Jr. Professorship of Biology
Professor of Biology Chris Gillen
Chris Gillen, who began teaching at Kenyon in 1997, studies the molecular physiology of ion transport proteins in insect models systems, including fruit flies and mosquitoes. His work has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.
Gillen has co-directed Kenyon’s Science and Nature Writing initiative. He also has co-directed and taught writing workshops including the Hoskins Frame Summer Science Writing Scholars and the Kenyon College-Indian Institute of Technology Madras Scientific and Technical Writing Workshop. He is a winner of Kenyon's Trustee Teaching Excellence Award and the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology’s M. Patricia Morse Award for Excellence and Innovation in Science Education. He has a bachelor of arts in biology from Lafayette College and a doctorate in cellular and molecular physiology from Yale University.
Established in 2000 by an anonymous gift, the Robert A. Oden Jr. Professorship honors those teachers and scholars whose work in and out of the classroom openly takes the kinds of risks upon which groundbreaking achievements are based. It celebrates and honors those who, through tenacity and risk-taking, achieve breakthrough moments in their discipline.