The Board of Trustees approved the promotion of eight assistant professors to the tenured position of associate professor at its January 2026 meeting. The professors receiving tenure are: Samer Al-Saber, Theatre; Ohan Breiding, Art; Allison Gill, Biology; Cynthia Holland, Biology; Carlos Macías Prieto, Spanish; Sidney Rothstein, Political Science; Munjulika Tarah, Dance; and Elizabeth Upton, Statistics. Their promotions will take effect July 1.
For professors in a tenure-track position, achieving tenure takes seven years. After teaching for three years, the Committee on Appointments and Promotions considers an assistant professor’s eligibility for a second term of four years. The committee makes its tenure recommendations after the two terms based on student feedback, peer reviews, class visits, and the candidate’s research. These decisions are then approved by the Board of Trustees.
Samer Al-Saber — Theatre
Al-Saber is a playwright and scholar of theatre. He received a doctorate in theatre from the University of Washington in 2013. His research focuses on the development of Palestinian theatre in the 1970s and 1980s, and studying how Palestinians have expressed their experiences living under occupation. Al-Saber teaches “Race and Performance,” “Introduction to Playwriting,” and “Directing for the Stage” at the College.
Ohan Breiding — Art
Breiding is a scholar of art and art history at the College. They studied art history and studio art at Scripps and hold a master’s of fine arts from California Institute of the Arts in photography and related media. Breiding focuses on ecology from a trans-feminist perspective within the arts, using this perspective to question beliefs in human exceptionalism.
Allison Gill — Biology
Gill told the Record that her interest in biology was cemented through undergraduate research at Mount Holyoke. There, she studied soil nutrient supply and microbial interactions in community ecology labs. In graduate school at Boston University, she continued this study in a soil biogeochemistry lab, investigating carbon dioxide’s role in carbon and methane cycling. She later pursued postdoctoral research on nitrogen supply at the University of Minnesota, and continues research on the topic.
Gill’s research focuses on how plants, microbes, and soil minerals can change the flow of carbon and nitrogen through ecosystems. She experiments in Hopkins Memorial Forest and Harvard Forest in Petersham, Mass.
Cynthia Holland — Biology
Holland is a metabolic biochemist and plant biologist studying plant enzymes used to produce commercial and pharmaceutical compounds.
She first became interested in botany at Henderson State University and continued her studies in biology and chemistry through this lens. After studying plant metabolism at Washington University in St. Louis for her doctorate, she went on to post-doctoral research at the Boyce Thompson Institute at Cornell to study compounds that can treat heart arrhythmias in humans.
At the College, her lab has recently found two genes that contribute to the aroma of grapes. She has designed and taught her own courses, including “Pharmacology” and “Secrets of Enzymes: Fidelity, Promiscuity, and Disease.”
“I love for students to see science as relevant to their everyday lives and get excited to learn how something works at a fundamental level,” she wrote in an email to the Record. “Some of my most rewarding teaching moments are in the research lab, where I mentor honors theses, independent studies, and research assistants.”
Carlos Macías Prieto — Spanish
Prieto teaches Spanish and Latina/o Studies at the College. He received his undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley, before pursuing a master’s in American studies from Purdue. He returned to Berkeley for his doctorate in Hispanic languages and literature. His research focuses on colonial Latin American literature and aims to place Indigenous writers and history in a global context. He currently teaches classes like “Mexican Literature and Cultural Production” and has previously taught courses such as “Indigenous Writers of Colonial Mexico and Peru.”
Sidney Rothstein — Political Science
Raised in tech-centric San Francisco, Rothstein told the Record that his interest in the tech sector’s role in production inspired him to study the political economy of the industry. However, he said that he found a lack of scholarship within the field. “There wasn’t really much about [the] tech sector and about what we might call actual contemporary economic production, and that was striking to me,” he said. “I was really interested in learning, how do we use the tools of political economic analysis that we’ve developed for previous eras of production … to understand the moment that we’re living in right now?”
Rothstein’s research and teaching have reflected his desire to more deeply analyze the tech industry. His 2022 book, “Recoding Power: Tactics for Mobilizing Tech Workers,” studied the role of collective action in the outcomes of laid-off tech workers, and he is currently researching how venture capital firms may influence legislation that benefits start-ups. “I’ve wanted to look into who is actually pushing for these kinds of policies, both at the national level, and then also supra-nationally in the European Union,” he said.
Munjulika Tarah — Dance
Tarah is a professor of dance at the College, focusing on its intersection with identity politics in Bangladesh and South Asia. Originally intending to be an English major and explore the field of journalism, she received her bachelor’s from Randolph College in dance history after discovering that it was an academic field. She continued by getting her master’s and doctorate in performance studies from Northwestern University, unifying interests in dance, writing, history, and fieldwork. Tarah previously taught at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Northwestern University in Doha, Qatar.
“I am passionate about … thinking and talking about how dance and movement makes meaning in the world,” she wrote in an email to the Record.
She hopes to show to her students why dance is meaningful across cultural contexts, simultaneously studying morality and the female body. She has developed a digital photography archive to fuel further research in the field.
Elizabeth Upton — Statistics
Upton told the Record that she became interested in pursuing a mathematics education after leaving a job in finance. She began teaching high school math after earning a master’s degree in education at Harvard and wished to pursue her education further. As a graduate student at Boston University she became passionate about the statistical analysis of network data, continuing these studies with her doctorate.
Her research focuses on modeling interconnections in data systems and deriving practical applications from them. “I’m interested in building statistical tools that help us learn from those connections,” she wrote in an email to the Record. Using these tools to better understand the world, she has studied topics including athletics, crime, and healthcare.
Upton told the Record that she tries to combine statistical education with practical skills that benefit her students beyond the classroom. “I love working with students on complex derivations of statistical methods — but I get just as excited when discussing how to make data-informed decisions about things that pop up in everyday life,” she wrote.
Now, with tenure, Upton hopes to take on new teaching styles. “I’m eager to teach a tutorial, help design new courses for our new stats department, and continue exploring strategies that support student learning,” she wrote.
