Pitt-Greensburg Hires 8 New Faculty

Pitt-Greensburg has announced the conclusion of its search for new faculty and will welcome eight new faculty members on campus in Fall 2022. The incoming faculty members will fill vacant positions in natural sciences, humanities, and performing arts.

Dr. Jacqueline Horrall, vice president of Academic Affairs, said the hiring processes for the new faculty were very successful and that each of the candidates selected to be interviewed was hired, a recent first for Pitt-Greensburg.

“I think the search committees did a really, really good job in communicating to the candidates who we are and who we’re looking for,” Dr. Horrall said. “I think it really appealed to those people.”

Each of the new faculty members—Professor Joey Banks, Dr. Adam Cilli, Dr. Sean DiLeonardi, Dr. Erin Divito, Dr. Jessica Knepper, Dr. Danielle Mehlman-Brightwell, Professor David Newman, and Dr. Natalie Taylor—will be fully onboarded and begin teaching by Fall 2022.

Professor David Newman, a Pitt-Greensburg alumni, was hired for a one-year position in Creative and Professional Writing this year and will be hired for a permanent position starting next year.

“I’ve taught on-and-off for years, I’ve taught at Pitt for a while, I’ve taught graduate classes at Chatham,” Professor Newman said. “And this opportunity came up, and I love it.”

Professor Newman is one of several new faculty members filling positions in the humanities. Dr. Horrall said Pitt-Greensburg has had difficulty filling such positions in the past few years because of declining enrollment numbers in those programs.

“I’ll send in a request to the Provost’s office to say ‘here are some vacancies, these are the people we have to hire,’ and they will come back and say ‘well, of the six or eight [vacancies] you sent, you can hire two or three,’” Dr. Horrall said.

Dr. Horrall said Pitt-Greensburg has never gotten full approval from the Provost’s office until this year. That’s because the Office of the Provost bases its approval process on Pitt-Greensburg’s needs. A new professor is more likely to be approved for hire if there is a significant interest in their core subject.

Last year, Pitt-Greensburg experienced an increase in enrollment in natural sciences, which in turn increased the need for faculty in that field. This year, a combination of retiring faculty and the introduction of new interdisciplinary classes has done the same for the humanities.