Kalamazoo College is welcoming two new tenure-track and seven visiting faculty members this academic year, expanding opportunities for students to study neuroscience, molecular biology, contemporary interdisciplinary art practices, English, chemistry, art history, history, economics and business, and biology.
New faculty include:
Quinlan Doctrove
Assistant Professor of Biology
Doctrove studies the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying neurological disease.
At the University of Michigan, Doctrove conducted doctoral research in neuroscience in Miriam Meisler’s laboratory in the Department of Human Genetics. His research included investigating genetic mutations associated with neurodegenerative disease and developing potential therapeutic approaches for FIG4 deficiency, a genetic disorder that affects lysosomal function.
Doctrove earned a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry, with a minor in psychology, from the University of Michigan-Dearborn in 2019. As an undergraduate, he researched riboflavin-binding proteins and helped develop a riboflavin deficiency assay.
He also has experience teaching and mentoring students. At Michigan, Doctrove served as a teaching assistant for undergraduate molecular and cellular biology laboratory courses and a graduate-level human anatomy laboratory course. He also mentored undergraduate researchers and participated in programs that introduced high school and middle school students to genetics, neuroscience and hands-on scientific investigation.
Nayda Collazo-Llorens
Assistant Professor of Art and Art History
Collazo-Llorens is an artist whose work explores mapping, memory, place, movement and dislocation through printmaking, drawing, painting, digital media, video and installation. She has taught at K for more than a decade through a series of part-time and full-time appointments. Most recently, she served as a full-time visiting assistant professor during the 2025–26 academic year.
Collazo-Llorens earned an M.F.A. in studio art from New York University in 2002 and a B.F.A., with distinction in printmaking and graphic design, from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 1990. Her recent individual exhibitions include “expand blur collapse” at El Schomburg Espacio de Arte Interdisciplinario in Chicago and “Topografía extendida” at the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico in San Juan. Her work has also been exhibited at the University of Michigan’s Stamps Gallery, the Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo, the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, and venues in New York, Miami and other national and international locations. Her work is featured in the books Vaivén: 21st-Century Art of Puerto Rico and Its Diaspora (University of Minnesota Press) and Relational Undercurrents: Contemporary Art of the Caribbean Archipelago (Duke University Press).
Ani Bezirdzhyan
Visiting Assistant Professor of English
Bezirdzhyan has taught a range of courses in English, comparative literature, and communications and media since earning a Ph.D. in English language and literature from the University of Michigan in 2024.
She served as a Frederick Donald Sober Postdoctoral Fellow at Michigan in 2024–25. Her research and professional experience also include work with the University of Michigan Museum of Art, University of Michigan Press, and several digital humanities and archival projects. Her scholarly interests include Victorian literature and culture, visual culture, media history and digital humanities.
Rose Campbell
Visiting Assistant Professor of Chemistry
Campbell is a chemist and educator whose teaching experience includes lecture and lab courses in general, and organic, and biochemistry, chemical biology, and laboratory science at Virginia Tech University. She has served as an instructor, guest lecturer, and teaching assistant, as well as a mentor to undergraduate researchers. She holds a bachelor’s degree and a Ph.D. from Virginia Tech.
Campbell’s research, supported in part by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, focusesd on discovery and characterization of natural products and bioactive molecules, including compounds produced by marine microorganisms, with applications in understanding disease and discovering potential therapeutic compounds. Campbell has published her research in several peer-reviewed journals and presented her work at national scientific conferences and symposia.
Crystal Rosenthal
Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics
Rosenthal is a scholar of ancient Roman art and archaeology who earned her bachelor’s degree in classics from Colorado College, a master’s degree in classical antiquity from the University of Colorado Boulder and a PhD in art history and archaeology from the University of Texas at Austin. From 2024-2025, Crystal was the Arthur Ross Rome Prize Fellow in Ancient Studies at the American Academy in Rome.
In addition to her research, Rosenthal has extensive teaching experience, most recently as a visiting assistant teaching professor at Southern Methodist University, where she taught courses on Roman history, Latin literature, Greek Myth and Pompeii. She has also taught at the University of Texas at Austin, Indiana University Indianapolis and the University of Texas at Arlington and spent several years as a Latin teacher and department chair at The Episcopal School of Dallas.
Alyssa VanHaitsma Kotva
Visiting Assistant Professor of History
VanHaitsma Kotva is a historian of the late ancient and medieval Mediterranean. She holds a PhD (2025) and MA (2020) in history from Ohio State University. She also holds a bachelor’s degree in history and classics from Calvin University. Her research is focused on the religious, cultural, social, and environmental history of the early medieval Mediterranean region.
Kotva has previously taught courses in ancient and medieval history at Ohio Wesleyan University and Ohio State University. She has also worked as first as editorial assistant and then as managing editor for the journal Studies in Late Antiquity, published by the University of California Press.
Larry Chavis
Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics
Chavis, a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, joined the Department of Economics and Business at K as a visiting assistant professor in January. He teaches courses including intermediate macroeconomics and international development, with a focus on Indigenous issues.
He brings 18 years of experience from the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, where he rose from assistant professor to clinical professor and earned five teaching awards, including two MBA@UNC Teaching Excellence Awards. He holds a Ph.D. in economic analysis and policy from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, along with graduate degrees in applied economics and Asian studies from Cornell University and a B.A. in anthropology from Duke University. He also recently completed an M.F.A. in creative writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts.
Chavis was inducted into UNC’s Order of the Golden Fleece, the university’s oldest honor society, in 2021. He has also been a frequent commentator in national media on topics including consumer boycotts and Native American economic issues, with appearances on NPR, CNN and in the Financial Times. He is currently working on a memoir, Walking in Two Worlds: An Indigenous Scholar Seeks Belonging in the Academy, reflecting on his path from a mobile home in one of the nation’s poorest counties to navigating a career in academia.
Cierra Sullivan
Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology
Sullivan brings expertise in evolutionary plant ecophysiology to K. She most recently served as a postdoctoral research associate at Michigan State University, where she investigated climate niche restrictions and species co-occurrence patterns among Lobelia species across common gardens in three states.
She earned her Ph.D. in evolutionary plant ecophysiology from Clemson University in 2024, with a dissertation examining the adaptive potential of leaf variegation in dimorphic Hexastylis plant species. She also holds a bachelor’s degree in organismal biology from Christopher Newport University.
Sullivan’s work has been supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and the Clemson University Graduate Diversity Fellowship Program. She received the LICOR Prize for Best Student Oral Presentation from the Botanical Society of America in 2024.
Doug Johnson
Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology
Johnson is a scholar of business strategy and organization with three decades of experience in academia. He earned his Ph.D. in management from the Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA in 1996, along with a bachelor’s degree in economics and mathematics from Wabash College.
Most recently, Johnson served as associate professor and McIntyre Chair in Business and Economics at Hillsdale College from 2016–25, after earlier faculty appointments at Ball State University, Purdue University’s Krannert Graduate School of Management and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
At Hillsdale College, Johnson co-founded the Center for Commerce and Freedom, a research and public outreach center. His research focuses on strategic management, organizational learning, and firm performance.
