Introducing Columbia's Newly Tenured Faculty

PhotoAnne Libera teaching in 2016. Photo: Phil Dembinski '08
Congratulations to the five new additions to Columbia's tenured faculty ranks: Christopher Arnold, MFA, Design; Olga Goldenberg, PhD, Humanities, History, and Social Sciences; Robert Hanserd, PhD, Humanities, History, and Social Sciences; Anne Libera, BS, Theatre; Kubilay Uner, MFA, Music.

Congratulations to Columbia College Chicago's newly tenured faculty. We applaud the following faculty members for this well-deserved career distinction and recognize the important contributions they’ve made to their academic disciplines and to the Columbia community.

 

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Anne Libera, BS
Theatre
School of Fine and Performing Arts

What are some challenges you’ve overcome or accomplishments you’ve achieved in your career that you are particularly proud of?

I created the B.A. degree in Comedy Writing and Performance for Columbia College which was the first bachelor's degree in Comedy in the United States.  The process of growing and revising curriculum for a degree without really any model to follow and learning how to support the specific student population attracted to the program has been a constant challenge and tremendous privilege for me as an educator. It really forced me to dig deeply into combining my experience in comedy practice with a deep dive into theory. 

What projects are you pursuing outside of your work as a tenured Columbia professor?

Two things that I'm looking forward to are getting the finished manuscript of my book Funnier: A Theory of Comedy with Practical Applications to my publisher Northwestern University Press this summer and working with Caring Across Generations to build on the work we have done in the Improvisation for Caregivers program. 

One Columbia related project that I'm working on is the Theatre department's Mainstage production of Are You There God? It's Me, Katniss Everdeen an original sketch show about Young Adult literature that I created with a cast of student writer/performers and filmed with help from Frequency TV. It's a little bit theatre, a little bit television, and a lot something I have never done this way before. (CW, it was written by college students about their relationship to this material so I'd rate it PG-13.)


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Kubilay Uner, MFA
Music
School of Fine and Performing Arts

What are some challenges you’ve overcome or accomplishments you’ve achieved in your career that you are particularly proud of?

I guess I’m most proud of the sum total of everything I was able to do, especially over the past few years. For two decades I had worked as a freelance composer for film and TV in Los Angeles. After coming to Columbia in 2014 I was able to continue and even expand my composing work, while at the same time directing the Music Composition for the Screen MFA program - rewriting the curriculum almost from the ground up, recruiting new adjunct faculty of national and international renown, increasing its number of applicants year-over-year with the help of the amazing folks in Graduate Admissions, and leading our MFA program to a #3 ranking in our industry’s leading trade publication, The Hollywood Reporter, in 2019.  

In my college work, I’m most proud of our Composers-in-Residence program, where every year, three practitioners of our craft at the height of their careers come to our program for seven weeks each and guide our MFA composers through re-scoring one of their projects in full length, recreating the same challenges and curveballs as they themselves experienced.

In my composing work I’m proud that I still maintain a full-time composing schedule. The probably biggest bucket-list-worthy project was that I got to write and produce a genuine Wyld Stallyns song for the last year's Bill & Ted movie, titled "That Which Binds Us Through Time: The Chemical, Physical And Biological Nature Of Love; An Exploration Of The Meaning Of Meaning, Part 1”. I’ve been wanting to be a Wyld Stallyn since the early ‘90s. I mean, who hasn’t?

What projects are you pursuing outside of your work as a tenured Columbia professor?

Throughout my time here at Columbia I have continued to write music for visual media, mostly narrative feature films. Over the past fifteen months I have scored AXIS SALLY, a feature historical drama starring Al Pacino; FORCE OF NATURE, a ‘90s-inspired action feature starring Mel Gibson, Emile Hirsch and Kate Bosworth; TIGER STYLE! an experimental feature drama about a foster teenager finding himself through the writings of Musashi; SPIKED, a social justice drama starring Aidan Quinn about freedom of the press and immigrant rights, based on a true story; and DIE LEDERHOSENAFFAIRE, a feature comedy for Austrian state TV about, yes, Lederhosen.

Currently, after a string of seven feature films and a few other projects back-to-back that ended last February, I am taking some time to “woodshed” new ideas that have been accumulating. Among other things, I am working on a new technique for scoring for film, utilizing multiple simultaneous timelines. These are concepts that have been successfully employed in experimental concert music but are usually too dense and complex to be of use in a film score environment, where clarity is paramount. I think I have found a way to make this idea not just work but be extremely expressive and useful in a film context and am busy creating “proof-of-concept” pieces. I’m also experimenting with new musical sound design techniques, using a very low noise model of contact mic that opens up new possibilities due to the much-improved fidelity of the mic.


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Olga Goldenberg, PhD
Humanities, History, and Social Sciences
School of Liberal Arts and Sciences

What are some challenges you’ve overcome or accomplishments you’ve achieved in your career that you are particularly proud of?

One of the biggest challenges I have successfully overcome during my tenure track period is how to conduct empirical data collection without a formal psychology laboratory by utilizing online platforms and including students in my research. I am thankful to be at Columbia, a place where my scholarly interests in creative thinking and processes are so well aligned with the nature and mission of the college and students' interests.

What projects are you pursuing outside of your work as a tenured Columbia professor?

I serve on the board for a non-profit start up organization featuring community artwork.


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Robert Hanserd, PhD
Humanities, History, and Social Sciences
School of Liberal Arts and Sciences

What are some challenges you’ve overcome or accomplishments you’ve achieved in your career that you are particularly proud of?

Some of the biggest challenges were related to financing my education and early resistance to my research emphasis on Afro-Atlantic history. I am particularly proud to be recognized as tenured faculty by other historians and researchers at other universities and education institutions around the globe but most important by the faculty of HHSS here at Columbia College Chicago.

What projects are you pursuing outside of your work as a tenured Columbia professor?

Keeping family in the center, perfecting my old man moves on the basketball court, and playing/practicing piano and drums again.


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Christopher Arnold, MFA
Design
School of Fine and Performing Arts

What are some challenges you’ve overcome or accomplishments you’ve achieved in your career that you are particularly proud of? 

I have had a fair share challenges in my career, including the sudden loss of my father during the first semester of my tenure track, but I have also had a multitude of amazing moments that have made this career in art and education all worth it. At Columbia College Chicago, I am particularly proud of the work I have done with my colleagues and the students in the Illustration Program. Together we have doubled the size of our program, added to our BFA with a new BA and Minor, created an annual illustration awards showcase (The ILLOs), built an award-winning Illustration Student Group (ISG), and have developed professional partnerships on local, national, and international levels. 

What projects are you pursuing outside of your work as a tenured Columbia professor? 

Outside of client driven projects, my current artwork is focused on my interest in capturing the beauty and destruction found in nature with special attention given to climate change. I am most excited to make fresh work on location through new research, development and travel starting in the summer of 2021. This new collection of art, illustration and design will conclude with a series of exhibitions, commercial campaigns, and a planned publication presenting my experiences. 


Achieving tenure is an intensive and rigorous process that occurs over a six-year period in which faculty candidates are assessed by many individuals, including the All-College Tenure Committee (ACTC).

"Through the hard work and dedication of our faculty, we continue to move the college forward in providing a creative and liberal arts-based education that is both purposeful and innovative," said Provost Marcella David. "Celebrating career growth and milestones inspires the Columbia community as a whole to take pride in our excellent newly tenured faculty."