Meet Our New Faculty

St. Lawrence University is pleased to welcome five new faculty members for the 2025-2026 academic year. These experts in their fields come with a dedication to teaching, mentoring, and providing experiential learning opportunities for their students.
 

A. Kendra Greene                                                                

A . Kendra Greene joins St. Lawrence as the Viebranz Visiting Professor of Creative Writing. She is the author of the illuminated essay collections No Less Strange or Wonderful and The Museum of Whales You Will Never See, which have drawn comparisons to Borges, Calvino, and Kafka. Her  work has been presented at the Smithsonian, exhibited at The Reading Room, translated into French and German, collected as far away as Qatar, and vended from the White Rock Zine Machine for 25 cents a pop. Her nonfiction has appeared in publications from Atlas Obscura to Zyzzyva, including Freeman's, The Guardian, Nautilus, Orion, and The Wall Street Journal.  

Rachael Jones                             

Rachael Jones joins St. Lawrence as an Instructor of Practice and will run the ceramics studio. Jones, who previously taught ceramics and drawing courses at St. Lawrence from 2018-2023, is a multi-disciplinary ceramic artist and writer whose artistic practice and research interests have ignited connections across the globe. Her primary interests are solastalgia, ecological awareness, and the inherent archaeological quality of clay to tell stories through time, form, material, and place-based social interaction. 

Brooks Kaiser

Brooks Kaiser joins St. Lawrence as an Associate Professor in Economics. Kaiser earned her Ph.D. from Northwestern University, and her primary teaching interests include microeconomics, risk management, energy and resource economics, and economic history. She enjoys seeing students thrive in making connections from economic theory across subjects as well as to their own lives. She is an applied microeconomist with spatial and temporal research interests that range widely from Ancient Greece to Hawaii to the modern-day Arctic.

Tongan Liu

Tongan Liu joins St. Lawrence as a Visiting Assistant Professor in Economics. Liu earned his Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut, and his research interests are in applied micro, labor, and demographic economics. His research also focuses on empirical applied micro, and examining the dynamics of marriage and cohabitation. Liu has a passion for classical music, and has been a concert pianist for many years. He continues to connect his passion for music with his academic and professional life.

Vinold John Mkenda 

Vinold John Mkenda joins St. Lawrence as a Teaching Fellow in the World Languages, Cultures, and Media Department. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Swahili Studies at the University of Dodoma, Tanzania, focused on the role of artificial intelligence in teaching and learning Kiswahili as a foreign language. His academic and professional work centers on teaching Kiswahili as a foreign language and promoting East African culture through immersive experiences such as market excursions, cooking classes, coffee tours, and language partner programs. Beyond academia, Vinold enjoys humor, social gatherings, and good food. He is especially fond of nyama choma (BBQ), with a particular weakness for well-grilled goat ribs.