Four new faculty positions have been approved in the past year, even while the College remains in serious financial straits.

Ten new tenure-track faculty members will join the Oberlin community next fall, including the first two hires of the recently approved

Comparative Studies Program and an economics professor currently serving as the Vice President of the Chicago Federal Reserve.

“We had very good pools,” Dean of the College Clayton Koppes said, “but also engaged in intense negotiations to realize our objectives.”

Eight of the ten were first choice candidates. “They all have strong backgrounds in teaching and scholarship,” he said.

Five of the new hires are African Americans, three are Asian and two Haspanic.

Gina Perez and Meredith Raimondo were hired for the new Comparative American Studies department, which was approved by the College Faculty Council in Fall 2002. The focus of the new program is the study of the more marginalized cultures in America, or what Koppes has called “the study of difference.”

Incoming economics professor Charles Evans, who will take time from his job at the Fed to teach at Oberlin, brings an expert knowledge of macroeconomics to the faculty. New East Asian Studies Professors Hsiu-Chuang Deppman and Bonnie Cheng will bring backgrounds of Chinese and Japanese language and art to the College.

The Politics department will add two new faces: Kristina Mani, an expert in Latin American politics and international relations, and Khalid Medani, a North African and Middle East specialist, both of whom will begin teaching in the fall.

Other appointments include non-tenured Oberlin professors Benjamin Lee of the Classics Department and Cynthia Chapman of the Religion Department. The College has also hired Baron Pineda for Anthropology and Pawan Dhingra for Sociology.

“Oberlin has a great drawing power,” Koppes said. “Many of the new appointees left tenure-track positions at other institutions to teach at Oberlin.”