UHV faculty members to receive promotions, tenure
Fourteen faculty members from the University of Houston-Victoria will receive promotions in the next fiscal year, with seven receiving tenure and seven receiving full professorship.
The associate professors promoted to the rank of professor were:
- Alexandre Aidov, College of Business
- Yingxu Kuang, College of Business
- Kaveh McAdam, College of Business
- Ziyun Yang, College of Business
- Katherine Bacon, College of Education & Health Professions
- Rachel Martinez, College of Education & Health Professions
- Ricardo Teixeira, College of Natural & Applied Science
The assistant professors promoted to associate professor and receiving tenure were:
- Tong Kang, College of Business
- Emmanuel Quansah, College of Business
- Sneha Nayar-Bhalerao, College of Education & Health Professions
- Esther Cuenca, College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences
- Rebecca Heron, College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences
- Brooks Sterritt, College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences
- Humberto Hernandez, College of Natural & Applied Science
“I am so happy to celebrate the well-deserved promotions of our outstanding faculty members," said Joann Olson, UHV interim provost. "Their dedication to teaching, research and service has had a profound impact on our students, university and their respective fields. I am proud to have such talented and passionate educators as part of our academic community, and I look forward to seeing all they will continue to accomplish."
The faculty promotions will take effect on Sept. 1 of this year. Assistant professors at UHV become eligible to apply for tenure and advancement to associate professor following six years of service to the university. Associate professors may seek promotion to full professor after completing five years in their current rank, although those with outstanding achievements may be considered for early promotion.
The process of promotion evaluation spans about one year, beginning with assessments from each school’s dean. These deans’ evaluations are submitted to the university’s Promotion and Tenure Committee to be assessed. Following the committee’s evaluation, their recommendations proceed to the provost, after which they undergo final review by the university’s president, the UH System chancellor and the UH System Board of Regents.
Alexandre Aidov joined UHV in 2013 as an assistant professor. Previously, he had earned his Ph.D. in business administration from Florida International University. Before that, he earned Master of Science degrees in mathematical science and mechanical engineering and a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering from Florida International University. His research focuses on market liquidity and depth, futures markets volatility and high frequency trading. He has been published in the Journal of Futures Markets, and his research has been presented at the Conference on High Frequency Data and Derivative Markets, the Financial Management Association, Eastern Finance Association and Midwest Finance Association.
Yingxu Kuang earned her doctorate of business administration in accounting from Louisiana Tech University. Before coming to UHV, she served as an assistant professor of accounting at the College of Saint Rose in New York. She has taught various courses in financial accounting, managerial accounting, not-for-profit accounting and auditing at Louisiana Tech University, College of Saint Rose and UHV. She is an active member of The American Accounting Association and The American Taxation Association. She has published multiple articles in academic journals including Advances in Accounting and Southern Economic Journal.
Kaveh McAdam spent years designing and implementing internationalization strategic plans in several companies in emerging markets prior to pursuing his Ph.D. He received his Ph.D. in strategic management/international business in 2013 from Old Dominion University. Prior to that, he received a master’s degree in business administration from Sharif University of Technology in 2008. He has been involved in multiple professional organizations and has served as a reviewer and session chair for Academy of Management and Academy of International Business.
Ziyun Yang earned his Ph.D. in accounting from the University of Houston. He also holds a master of philosophy degree in accounting from Lingnan University and a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Nanjing University. Before coming to UHV, he taught courses in financial accounting in the UH Bauer College of Business. He is an active member of the American Accounting Association.
Katherine Bacon received a Ph.D. in counselor education from Sam Houston State University in 2011. Previously, she earned a master’s degree in community counseling from the University of Nebraska at Omaha and a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Creighton University. She is a licensed professional counselor and has had multiple published articles, chapters and book contributions.
Rachel Martinez serves as the dean in the College of Education & Health Professions. She earned her Ed.D. from Texas Tech University in 2000 and has had three published articles, which include: “Student disengagement: A national concern from a local perspective” in the National Social Science Journal, “Impact of MP3 players on fluency rate of beginning readers” in The International Journal of Technology, Knowledge, and Society, and “Response to intervention: How is it practiced and perceived?” in the International Journal of Special Education.
Ricardo Teixeira has multiple publications which include the University of Texas at Austin, the Mathematical Association, Plus Magazine and the Journal of Magic Research. His work centers in the functional analysis field. Teixeira received his Ph.D. from UT in 2010. He began teaching at UHV in the fall of 2010 when the university admitted its first class of freshman and sophomore students. He helped implement lower-division math courses and first-year seminar.
Tong Kang earned his Ph.D. in business administration from the University of Memphis. Prior to that, he earned a Master of Business Administration and Master of Science in management and administrative sciences from the University of Texas at Dallas. He received a Bachelor of Business Administration from Dongguk University in Seoul, South Korea. His work has been featured at conferences such as the Academy of Management, Academy of International Business, Southern Management Association and Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology.
Emmanuel Quansah is an alumnus from UHV where he graduated in 2014 with a Master of Business Administration. He went on to earn a Ph.D. in management at Case Western Reserve University. Some of the subjects he teaches at UHV include principles of management, leadership and seminar in management and leadership.
Sneha Nayar-Bhalerao is a licensed professional counselor and holds a Ph.D. in counselor education from Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. She also holds a master’s degree in clinical psychology from Shreemati Nathibai Damodar Thackersey University and a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Mumbai, India. She has been a part of more than five presentations, which included the conference of The Southern Association for Counselor Education and Supervision, Texas Counseling Association 59th Annual Professional Growth Conference, the conference of The Southern Association for Counselor Education and Supervision and more.
Esther Cuenca is a specialist in the history of medieval and early modern Europe. Her book, “The Making of Urban Customary Law in Medieval and Reformation England,” focuses on the development of law in English towns from the 12th to the 16th centuries. Her essays have been published in Urban History, Continuity and Change, Popular Music, The Paris Review and History Compass. She holds a Ph.D. in history from Fordham University and a master’s degree in history from California State University, Long Beach. She also holds two bachelor's degrees in theological studies and classical civilizations from Loyola Marymount University.
Rebecca Heron received her doctorate in forensic psychology from the University of Nottingham. Her publications include Barriers and Facilitators of Disclosing Domestic Violence to the UK Health Service; Barriers and facilitators of disclosing domestic violence to the healthcare service: A systematic review of qualitative research; Meeting a person with pedophilia: Attitudes towards pedophilia among psychology students: A pilot study; and Attachment, Coping, and Suicidal Behavior in Male Prisoners.
Brooks Sterritt earned a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Prior to that, Sterritt had received a master of fine arts from Emerson College and a bachelor’s degree from Wake Forest University. His research and teaching interests center on American literature, history and theory of the novel, creative writing, and film. Writing by Sterritt appears in The Believer, the New Republic, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Subtropics, Salt Hill, Puerto del Sol and more.
Humberto Hernandez earned his Ph.D. in biomedical sciences, visual sciences from the University of North Texas Health Science Center. He went on to finish his postdoctoral work at the Ocular Surface Center in the Baylor College of Medicine. He joined the university in 2019 and teaches in the biology undergraduate program and the biomedical sciences graduate program. He also teaches in the College of Education & Health Professions. Hernandez’s research program is on understanding the contribution of aging, the microbiome, inflammation, and fibrosis to the pathogenesis of ocular diseases, particularly Keratoconjunctivitis sicca (Dry-eye), Keratoconus, and Primary Open-Angle Glaucoma. His research has been published in more than 14 publications.
The University of Houston-Victoria, located in the heart of the Coastal Bend region since 1973 in Victoria, Texas, offers courses leading to more than 50 academic programs in the schools of Arts & Sciences; Business Administration; and Education, Health Professions & Human Development. UHV provides face-to-face classes at its Victoria campus, as well as an instructional site in Katy, Texas, and online classes that students can take from anywhere. UHV supports the American Association of State Colleges and Universities Opportunities for All initiative to increase awareness about state colleges and universities and the important role they have in providing a high-quality and accessible education to an increasingly diverse student population, as well as contributing to regional and state economic development.