Faculty Focus-February 17, 2026
Faculty members put their knowledge into action so students and others are able to benefit from it. Recently, faculty published in prestigious outlets, published groundbreaking books, and developed innovative courses.
Yesim Bayar
Associate Professor and Chair of Sociology Yesim Bayar recently published a new book titled Looking Back: Armenian Emigrants, Nationalism and Modern Turkey published by I. B. Tauris.
Looking Back is an exploration of how Armenians, as migrants in Canada, remember their past lives in Turkey and make sense of their experiences in two very different landscapes. The examination tackles questions about memory, citizenship, and being a minority inside a nationalist landscape while revealing rich and multilayered accounts of everyday encounters with institutions, friends, and strangers.
Recently, Bayar has also joined the International Advisory Board of the journal Nations and Nationalism, published by the Association of Ethnicity and Nationalism Studies.
Gisele El Khoury
Director of the Language Center and Arabic Instructor Gisele El Khoury recently collaborated with Carnegie Mellon Professor Nevine Abraham to design and develop a fully online semester of Elementary Arabic II. This cross-institution partnership aimed to expand access to high-quality Arabic language instruction while building an engaging, structured, and academically rigorous online course model.
The project combined curriculum development expertise with innovative digital pedagogy. Together, El Khoury and Abraham created a full-semester course designed to strengthen students’ reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills, while also deepening cultural awareness. The course maintains the rigor of in-person instruction while integrating interactive resources and accessible learning pathways that support diverse student needs.
A key highlight of the collaboration was its AI-enhanced course production model. To enrich student engagement and strengthen online delivery, the team used a range of AI-powered educational and creative tools such as Pictory for transforming original readings into digital storytelling videos, Fliki to generate narrated vocabulary and list-based instructional videos, Suno for music generation, and MagicSchool for song generation. These tools supported the development of dynamic multimedia content and contributed to an interactive online learning environment aligned with best practices in contemporary language teaching.
Mert Kartal
Associate Professor of Political Science Mert Kartal’s latest piece for Good Authority looks at what 2025 revealed about corruption within the European Union itself. Instead of focusing only on problems in member countries, Kartal turns the spotlight on EU institutions. Recent scandals and debates about transparency show that the Union faces a credibility problem, he argues.
In recent years, he says, the EU has taken steps to fight corruption. It now monitors rule-of-law standards more closely and links some funding to good governance. But controversies involving EU officials have raised tough questions about whether the Union holds itself to the same standards it expects from others. When it falls short at home, its message abroad loses force.
This matters politically, Kartal argues. When people see double standards, populist politicians can use that frustration to attack the EU as secretive or self-serving. If the EU does not match its words with strong internal oversight, corruption will remain both a policy challenge and a political flashpoint across Europe.
Good Authority is a prominent political science platform that translates academic research into accessible content for a broader audience, where Kartal serves as a fellow.
Ivan Ramler
Jack and Sylvia Burry Associate Professor of Statistics Ivan Ramler was recently featured in The New York Times Learning Network’s “What’s Going On in This Graph?”
Ramler prepared the February 11th “Reveal & Reflect” for a New York Times opinion piece examining how W.N.B.A. revenue growth compares with what players take home, and what salaries might look like under an N.B.A.-style revenue-sharing model. The timing is especially relevant as the W.N.B.A. and the Women’s National Basketball Players Association have been in active negotiations over a new collective bargaining agreement, bringing the topic to mainstream attention.
Launched in 2017 as a collaboration between The New York Times Learning Network and the American Statistical Association, “What’s Going On in This Graph?” has become a widely used classroom resource for teaching data literacy. Aimed at high school students, each week from September to early May the feature presents a real data visualization from the Times and asks students to notice, wonder, and discuss what story the graph tells.
Ramler’s other current interests and projects involve building statistics and data science educational materials using sports data, applications to the environment and ecology, as well as in esports analytics—the statistical analyses of competitive video games.
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