The group of both tenure-track and tenured faculty includes multiple alumnae, as well as several who previously taught here as postdoctoral fellows and visiting professors.
Alejandra Castillo ’17, visiting instructor of mathematics and statistics, graduated from Pomona with a degree in mathematics before pursuing a master’s in statistics at Oregon State University. Her graduate student research explores alternatives to penalization when trying to obtain a sparse solution to a clustering problem. In Corvallis, Castillo was a graduate mentor for the Oregon 4-H Outreach Leadership Institute, which prepares high school migrant youth from farming communities for college.
Pui Tiffany Chow, assistant professor of art, earned her MFA in visual art from UC Riverside. She previously taught at Pomona as a lecturer and visiting assistant professor. Chow’s painting explores the intersection of abstraction and figuration through a pastiche of historical references ranging from the representation of the female form to various Eastern and Western cultural codes.
Andrew Law, assistant professor of philosophy, specializes in freedom and moral responsibility, in addition to metaphysics. His research encompasses free will, time and the relationship between the two. Law earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from UC Riverside and did his postdoctoral research at the Institute for Philosophy at Leibniz University Hannover in Germany. Law previously lectured at Western Washington University and USC.
Amira Lundy-Harris, assistant professor of gender and women’s studies, is a scholar in trans studies, Black studies, kinship, Black feminist thought, women’s studies and LGBTQ studies. They earned a Ph.D. in women, gender and sexuality studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, where they were the instructor of record in a course that introduced significant strands of thought in the field of Black trans studies and covered genealogical connections to Black feminist thought and trans studies.
Pamela Prickett, associate professor of sociology, earned a Ph.D. from UCLA. She was an associate professor at the University of Amsterdam and served as a faculty member for the Amsterdam Research Centre for Gender and Sexuality and the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research. Her research focuses on how the erosion and resilience of social ties perpetuate social inequalities. She has published two books about Los Angeles, including Believing in South Central and The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels.
Omer Shah, assistant professor of anthropology, received his Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia and has been teaching at Pomona as a Chau Mellon fellow since 2022. Shah was awarded a summer stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities to write two chapters of his monograph Made in Mecca: Expertise, Techno-politics, and Hospitality in the Post-Oil Holy City.
Amani Lee Starnes, assistant professor of theatre, has been a professional performer in Los Angeles and New York for nearly 20 years, appearing in such productions as Amazon’s Transparent and NBC’s Community. She earned her Ph.D. in theater and performance studies from Stanford this summer, and her expertise includes contemporary Black feminist theatrical adaptation.
Jessica Stern ’12, assistant professor of psychological science, graduated from Pomona summa cum laude with a degree in psychology and earned a Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research examines how early childhood experiences shape brain development, empathy and mental health over the life course. Stern most recently was a National Research Service Award postdoctoral fellow and Engagements teaching fellow at the University of Virginia.