CFA is welcoming five new full-time faculty members to our CFA community this year, and we celebrate the tenure promotions of an additional six distinguished faculty. These faculty offer world-renowned expertise that will further the LMU and CFA missions to instill leadership and service to create a just world within a humanistic liberal arts education.

New Full Time Faculty

Bernard Brown
Assistant Professor
Dance 

Bernard Brown is an international performing artist, choreographer, educator, scholar and arts activist who specializes in the intersections of blackness, queerness, and arts activism. As artistic director of Bernard Brown/bbmoves, a social justice dance theater company, his choreography has been presented across the US and internationally in Seoul, South Korea. His choreography has been showcased at Royce Hall, REDCAT, ODC Theater, Dance Mission Theater, Highways Performance Space, University of Chicago, the Fowler Museum, HomeLA, the University of Chicago and California State University Long Beach, amongst others. Brown’s activism has been featured by the Los Angeles Times and New York Times.

Taryn Venderhoop
Assistant Professor
Dance

Taryn Vander Hoop is a dancer, choreographer, educator, and producer who is the Co-Founder, Executive Director, and Associate Artistic Director of Summation Dance, an NYC/LA based modern dance company known for creating innovative and highly physical work. Hoop is known for her long unique sequences and encouraging spirit. As an educator, she aims to help students find joy in movement and freedom and ease in the body and mind. Hoop is an E-RYT 500 certified yoga instructor, and has led 200hr certifications in New York, South Korea, Vietnam, and New Jersey. She wrote her own certification curriculum in 2017 and started Lila Flow Yoga, which is recognized by the Yoga Alliance.

Maru Serrichio-Joiner
Clinical Assistant Professor
Marital and Family Therapy with Specialization in Art Therapy

Maru Serrichio-Joiner began her art therapy practice in 2013 and has since served many clients, as well as provided workshops to clinicians, schools, and organizations to discuss and address ways to transform and experience loss and grief, transition to end of life, and trauma, to name a few, with a creative and socially just focus. She has a diverse background and uses a cultural competence and a multi-systemic lens throughout all her professional roles. Serrichio-Joiner is an International Psychology PhD candidate, with a concentration in Organization and Systems, from The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, where she is currently researching loss and grief support in the Mexican workplace.

Jessica Bianchi
Assistant Professor
Marital and Family Therapy with Specialization in Art Therapy

Jessica Bianchi is a clinical professor at Loyola Marymount University who has a specialized skill set that integrates concepts from art therapy and education as a way to promote social justice and community activism amongst diverse populations. She specializes in art therapy, trauma informed educational practices, and arts and social emotional competencies. Bianchi has facilitated numerous therapeutic arts services within a multitude of contexts including residential group homes, outpatient clinics, K-high school settings, medical centers, and federal correctional institutions. She also provides clinical services in a Los Feliz private practice facilitating therapy with adults and couples experiencing anxiety, depression, life transitions, grief, and trauma.

Joyce Yip Green
Assistant Professor
Marital and Family Therapy with Specialization in Art Therapy

Joyce Yip Green has over 15 years experience as an art therapist in community based mental health, working with diverse populations across the lifespan and specializing in the mental health treatment of infants, toddlers, and families. Her research interests include culture, human development and parenting. She currently works as a sub-investigator and rater in behavioral research and a mental health therapist at a community college health center.

Tenure Promotions

Louvenia Jackson
Associate Professor
Marital and Family Therapy with Specialization in Art Therapy

Louvenia Jackson has been at LMU since 2016 and specializes in community-based art therapy practice and research in addressing social justice considerations in art therapy education. Her work on cultural humility in art therapy education has earned her the May 2016 Outstanding Service Award from NDNU’s Art Therapy Psychology Department Ph.D. Program and the American Art Therapy Association’s 2016 Perlie Roberson Scholarship, the 2020 Loyola Marymount University Ascending Scholar Award and the Southern California Art Therapy Association Distinguished Service Award 2021.

Leon Wiebers
Professor
Theatre Arts and Dance

Leon Wiebers is a professor in costume design whose work encompasses musical theatre, dance, opera, and straight plays. Wiebers’ work has won the Carbonelle Award, Fulbright Research Grant to Korea, Back Stage West Garland and LA Weekly Awards for Three Sisters for Interact Theatre, LA and an LA Ovation Award for Ubu Roi at A Noise Within. He is member of United Scenic Artists, Local 829 and a national board member for the Costume Society of America.

Shaun Anderson
Associate Professor
Communication Studies

Shaun Anderson is a professor of organizational communication and faculty advisor for the Institute of Business Ethics and Sustainability. His teaching and research interests are focused on the effective use of corporate social responsibility within and outside of organizations, particularly, sport organizations. He has published in the Psychology of Popular Media Culture, International Journal of Sport Communication, and Sport Marketing Association conference proceedings. His latest book chapter entitled, Protest and Public Memory: Documenting the 1968 Summer Olympic Games, will be published in the upcoming book entitled, Sporting Realities: Critical Readings of the Sport Documentary.

Arnab Banerji
Associate Professor
Theatre Arts

Arnab Banerji is a professor of theatre arts who teaches theatre history, dramatic literature, and dramaturgy. His research and reviews have appeared in Asian Theatre Journal, Theatre Journal, TDR, and South Eastern Review of Asian Studies. Banerji spent the 2014-2015 academic year as the ASIANetwork Luce Foundation Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at Muhlenberg College where he offered introductory and advanced courses on Asian Performance.

Meng Li
Associate Professor
Communication Studies

Meng Li is an ethnographer and a cultural analyst. Her research aims to understand the human and relational consequences of large-scale social transformations, such as migration and globalization, especially on the issues of migration and mobility in China. Li’s scholarly work has appeared in peer-reviewed journals, such as Journal of Family Communication, Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, Journalism, and Telematics and Informatics, among others.

Melody Rodari
Associate Professor
Art History

Melody Roadari’s research investigates the development and evolution of Buddhist art in Southeast Asia with focus on modern and contemporary Buddhist visual culture in Thailand. Her writing has been published by the National Art Education Association, University of Colorado Press, University of Florida Press, Oxford University Press and UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press. Rodari has received various grants including a Henry Luce Foundation fellowship and Andrew W. Mellon fellowship. In addition to her teaching and publishing, Dr. Rod-ari continues her curatorial work, which includes the newly redesigned South and Southeast Asian galleries at the USC Pacific Asia Museum.