Whitman Celebrates Faculty Excellence With New Paul Garrett Fellows

Whitman College is pleased to announce the latest faculty members to be awarded the Paul Garrett Fellowship.

As a liberal arts college repeatedly recognized for excellence in undergraduate teaching, Whitman is committed to supporting the development of faculty members throughout their careers. The Paul Garrett Fellowship is awarded to Assistant or Associate Professors who combine a deep commitment to teaching with active, creative scholarship. Fellows retain the Paul Garrett Fellow title until their next academic rank promotion, as well as a professional development stipend that remains an ongoing addition to their base salary.

Joining Associate Professor of Art History and Paul Garrett Fellow Lisa Uddin, Whitman congratulates the following faculty as new Paul Garrett Fellows starting with the 2025–2026 academic year:

Dalia Biswas, Chemistry

In her work at the intersection of bioinorganic and computational chemistry, Associate Professor of Chemistry and Paul Garrett Fellow Dalia Biswas is helping shape the future of chemical research and teaching at Whitman. Her research focuses on modeling the active sites of molybdenum enzymes—molecules essential to the Earth’s nitrogen, carbon and oxygen cycles—and she applies powerful computational methods to understand how they work.

Her vision extends beyond the lab. Ginger Withers, Dr. Robert F. Welty Professor of Biology and Co-Director of Brain, Behavior and Cognition, who served on the fellowship selection committee, says, “Biswas envisioned and spearheaded development of the Wilke Family Computational Chemistry Research and Teaching Lab, which brings new possibilities for designing and predicting complex chemical structures to our curriculum.” Read more about the lab in Whitman Magazine.

Biswas also led Whitman into partnership with the National Science Foundation Center for Computer Assisted Synthesis and directs the Digital Imaging and Vision Applications in Science program at Whitman, expanding opportunities for student-faculty research and collaboration. Her work exemplifies how innovation and mentorship can transform both science and student learning.

Maria Lux, Art

As an artist, educator and storyteller, Associate Professor of Art and Paul Garrett Fellow Maria Lux invites viewers and students alike to reimagine the boundaries between humans and animals. Through installations and multimedia projects, she explores how play, humor and imagination can open space for serious reflection on ecology and ethics.

“Lux has been a constant educational innovator and an active exhibitor of artwork that troubles the human/animal boundary in order to, often playfully, offer serious ecocriticism,” says Lydia McDermott, Associate Professor of Rhetoric, Writing and Public Discourse and Director of the Center for Writing and Speaking, who served on the fellowship selection committee. Lux’s scholarship extends these ideas into her forthcoming co-edited volume, “Unserious Ecocriticism: Humor, Play, and Environmental Destruction in Art and Visual Culture.”

Lux has created and collaborated on several animal-centered First Year Seminars, including one where students recorded true-crime podcasts about predators and monsters. In a studio art course she co-designed and co-taught with Whitman’s Biology lab coordinator, students took a field trip to Los Angeles and used the college's own specimen collection to create art/science displays in Whitman’s Hall of Science. Across her teaching and collaborations, Lux invites students to experiment, observe and imagine new ways of understanding the living world.

Erin Pahlke, Psychology

For developmental psychologist Erin Pahlke, understanding how children and adolescents see the world is central to understanding how they grow within it. As an Associate Professor of Psychology and Paul Garrett Fellow, she studies how young people form ideas about race, gender and social identity—and how those ideas shape emotion, learning and opportunity.

Her scholarship connects psychology to the social and political realities that shape children’s lives. John Cotts, Professor of History, who served on the fellowship selection committee, says, “Pahlke has demonstrated excellent teaching at Whitman while producing a steady output of top-notch scholarship, establishing her as a key scholar in the study of how children’s emotional life reflects social and political conditions.” 

In her teaching, Pahlke invites students into that same intersection of research and lived experience, mentoring them as they explore how developmental science can help build more equitable educational systems.

Andrea Sempértegui, Politics

Andrea Sempértegui, Assistant Professor of Politics and Paul Garrett Fellow, brings a global and decolonial lens to the study of Indigenous movements, environmental justice, and feminist politics in Latin America. A former member of the Quito-based collective Comunálisis, she examines how Indigenous women and communities organize against extractive industries and envision new relationships between land, sovereignty and care.

Her scholarship bridges continents and conversations. Cotts says, “In just four years at Whitman College, Andrea Sempértegui Barreiros has produced an impressive body of scholarship on the politics of Indigeneity. Her work on the legacies of imperialism and colonialism has given our students critical perspective on Whitman’s own ongoing conversations about its place in the world.” 

Sempértegui’s forthcoming book, “Today, I Dreamt What Will Happen Tomorrow: Indigenous Women, Extractive Capital and Forest Politics in Ecuador” (University of Florida Press), follows the Mujeres Amazónicas, a collective of Indigenous women resisting oil and mining projects in the Ecuadorian Amazon. In both research and teaching, Sempértegui challenges students to see politics as a site of imagination, connection and transformation.