The College of Arts and Sciences welcomes four new scholar-teachers to the College of Arts and Sciences in 2018. 

Jaeda Coutinho-Budd joins the biology department as an assistant professor. Her new appointment marks a homecoming of sorts—she grew up in South Burlington before beginning her academic career at Oberlin, where she earned her BA in neuroscience with high honors. 

She received her Ph.D. in neurobiology from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Coutinho-Budd has held teaching positions at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, where she was presented with the Faculty Award for Outstanding Contribution to Curricular Development in 2016, and at UNC. Earlier in her career she worked as a lab technician and intern for Professor Cynthia Forehand at UVM.  

She is interested in the cellular and molecular aspects of glial cell development and function. Glia are often overlooked in neuroscience, but almost everything neurons do requires glial support. While progress has been made in understanding neuron-glia interactions at synapses and axons, much less is known about how glia interact with neuronal cell bodies. Dr. Coutinho-Budd uses Drosophila to investigate glia at neuronal cell bodies, and how these glial cells 1) develop, 2) communicate with surrounding neurons and glia, and 3) contribute to overall nervous system function and health.

Coutinho-Budd returns to the Burlington area with her husband, daughter, and two chihuahuas. Besides family activities, she enjoys playing the violin and viola.  

Brooke McCorkle joins UVM’s department of music and dance as an assistant professor of music history and literature. She specializes in opera of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, film, music, and the music of modern Japan.

McCorkle’s academic career reflects her wide interdisciplinary interests, which include philosophy, environmental studies and gender studies. She completed her undergraduate education at the University of Oklahoma where she received a B.A. in international area studies and a bachelor of music degree. She received her M.A. in East Asian languages and civilization and a Ph.D. in musicology from the University of Pennsylvania. Most recently she taught at the State University of New York at Geneseo. 

McCorkle has published articles in the Journal of Horror Studies and the Journal of Fandom Studies in addition to several chapters in edited volumes. In 2018, she co-authored a book Japan’s Green Monsters: Environmental Commentary in Kaijū Cinema (McFarland Press). This summer she received a William Holmes/Frank D’Accone Endowment from the American Musicological Society grant to complete research for her book Searching for Wagner in Japan. Synonymous with this grant, McCorkle served as a Visiting Researcher at Waseda University’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Tokyo. Currently she is working on a book about an all-female punk band from Osaka called Shonen Knife which will appear as part of Bloomsbury Press’s 33 ⅓ Japan Series.

McCorkle plays the double bass and hopes to join the UVM orchestra this fall. In her free time she loves cycling and baking cupcakes. Currently she’s training to run in the upcoming Leaf Peepers half marathon in Waterbury.

Sarah Newman  has been appointed assistant professor of anthropology. Most recently she taught as assistant professor of anthropology at James Madison University.

Newman has carried out archaeological fieldwork around the world. She currently directs excavations at the ancient Maya city of Topoxté, Guatemala, and participates in projects in Chiapas, Mexico and at the site of Petra in Jordan. She has published numerous articles, book chapters and book reviews relating to her primary research on the Pre-Columbian era of Mesoamerica. She was second author of the book Temple of the Night Sun: A Royal Tomb at El Diablo, Guatemala, and is at work on another book Talking Trash: A History of Waste in Mesoamerica. 

Newman completed her undergraduate education at Yale, where she won the Michael D. Coe Prize in archeological studies. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in anthropology at Brown University; her Ph.D. thesis won the Joukowsky Family Foundation Outstanding Dissertation Award. 

During her academic career she has received numerous external grants, including a 2017 Richard Carley Hunt Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Wenner-Gren Foundation and a Fulbright Institute of International Education/U.S. State Department research/study grant to Guatemala.

Michael Ruggiero has joined the College as assistant professor of chemistry. He has long explored the places where the disciplines of chemistry, physics, biology and computer science meet. He taught himself how to use high-performance computing (HPC) tools in his research, and at UVM he is heading up his own group focused on marrying experimental low-frequency spectroscopy and theoretical quantum-mechanical results. 

Ruggiero earned his Ph.D. in chemistry at Syracuse University and recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Cambridge (2016-2018). At Cambridge he utilized a variety of techniques to characterize the properties of solid-state materials. During his tenure he has supervised both master’s and doctoral students and has published 24 articles in peer-reviewed journals, with another five articles currently under consideration.

“My work involves using energy, in the form of far-infrared radiation, to look at the way atoms and molecules move within advanced materials,” he explains. “using HPC tools allows us to model and describe increasingly complex materials, leading to an unprecedented level of understanding of the relationship between molecular motions and their physical properties. This has applications in many fields, ranging from pharmaceuticals to semiconductors”

Ruggiero received an additional certification for teaching university STEM courses from Syracuse University. Outside of the lab, Ruggiero enjoys spending time outside with his two dogs, Nikki and Cooper, and is always up for live music. Spending time in Europe, Ruggiero has made friends with people from around the world, and enjoys travelling and experiencing different cultures.