Trinity Western University is pleased to announce that the following faculty members have been awarded tenure and/or promotion in 2024.
TWU celebrates 8 faculty members who have received tenure and 4 faculty members who have received promotion this year.
TWU faculty tenure appointments in 2024
Tenure appointments recognize the high level of contribution made by long-term faculty members to the University's ministry of advancing Christian scholarship and teaching. The achievements of newly tenured faculty were honoured at a Tenure Celebration Dinner in April and announced to the University community during Academic Review Day on May 1, 2024.
Please join us in congratulating the following faculty members:
Ruth Anaya, Assistant Professor of Leadership
As a researcher, Ruth Anaya led the first GLOBE study on leadership in Black Sub-Saharan Africa. Dr. Anaya has expertise in gender studies, cultural anthropology, cross-cultural communication and leadership, global and transformational leadership, culture change, socio-economic development in the global south (specifically Kenya, Guatemala, Belize), and curriculum design and contextualization for Asia and Africa. She is the 2005 winner of the TWU Dean's Innovative Teaching Award. She has led program development for TWU online courses, specifically Anthropology, and development of successful Travel Study programs focusing on the developing world, notably Guatemala/Belize/Honduras and Kenya/Uganda.
Louis Bielmann, Assistant Professor of Business
Louis Bielmann teaches management finance, financial planning, advanced financial planning and applied investments at Trinity Western’s School of Business. He previously taught finance, strategic hedging for value investors and the Ivey Field Project at Western University’s Ivey Business School, where he also served as the founding Manager of the Ivey Value Fund. Prior to beginning his university teaching career, Prof. Bielmann was an airline pilot, reaching the rank of Captain and Simulator Instructor at Swissair, where he flew the MD-80, MD-11 and Airbus A320 aircraft types from his home base in Zurich, Switzerland. His career as a commercial pilot extended over a period of nearly 25 years and took him to some 83 countries around the globe. Bielmann is the 2021 recipient of TWU's Davis Distinguished Teaching Award.
Silvia Brynjolfson, Assistant Professor of World Languages and Cultures
Originally from Argentina, Silvia Brynjolfson has lived on three continents. She earned four graduate degrees culminating in a Doctor of Modern Languages. Her expertise includes Spanish language instruction and the writings of Jerónimo Gracián. She has provided leadership to several international networks including WakeUp Deborah, a prayer network in Spanish-speaking countries, and the WEA Women’s Commission where she served as the representative for Latin America. Dr. Brynjolfson is the co-founder of the Latino Antihuman Trafficking Forum, a network of evangelical leaders from 19 countries in Latin America addressing the concerns relating to human trafficking in the region. She is the author of Trata de personas: lo que la Iglesia necesita saber/Human Trafficking: What the Church Needs to Know (2023).
Anita Coté, Associate Professor of Human Kinetics
Anita Coté is a cardiovascular physiologist researching how exercise affects the heart in health and disease. As the Canada Research Chair in Cardiovascular Adaptation to Exercise, Dr. Cote’s research focuses on how the female heart adapts to exercise beginning in childhood. Through long-term tracking of exercise patterns relative to structural and functional changes in the heart and blood vessels, Dr. Cote hopes to address some important gaps in understanding around the progression of CVD risk in women while also informing CVD prevention and treatment strategies, aimed at improving the health of all Canadians.
Darlaine Jantzen, Associate Professor of Nursing
Darlaine Jantzen's specific areas of interest include philosophy of nursing education, adult learning theory, experiential learning, and healthcare organizational culture in relation to workplace learning and excellence in nursing practice. She is the recipient of a NNPBC Award of Excellence in Nursing Education (2017). She has served on the executive of the Nurse Educators of British Columbia (2016-2019) and on the BCCNP Education Program Review Committee (2019-2022). She is also a member of the International Learning Collaborative (ILC), an organization committed to research and education of Fundamentals of Care in nursing. Prior to her academic career she practiced nursing in medical cardiology, including critical care, telemetry, and post-intervention cardiac care.
Deepak Mathew, Associate Professor of Counselling Psychology
Deepak Matthew has experience in teaching and researching topics across broad areas in psychology and education such as social psychology, lifelong learning and adult education, career development, and counselling psychology. He has a passion for training and mentoring and is actively involved in multiple research projects, including research engagement focused on career decision-making of immigrant and Indigenous young people in Canada. Deepak immigrated to Canada from India and continues to be well connected with issues and topics related to South Asia.
Lara Ragpot, Dean, School of Education, Professor of Education
Lara Ragpot's main focus in the courses she teaches is childhood development and special education. More specifically, she is motivated to understand the exceptional child – how they learn and how to best support educators to teach them. She has published in the fields of social issues in education, childhood cognitive development, early mathematical cognition, the interface of neuroscience, psychology and pedagogy, and teacher education. Dr. Ragpot is also a Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. In international collaborative work with the University of Helsinki (Finland) and the Universities of Potsdam and Duisburg-Essen in Germany, she has conducted various studies on young children’s math cognition and executive functioning in South Africa.
Simon (Wang-Hung) Tse, Assistant Professor of Mathematical Sciences
Simon Tse's primary research interest is the pattern formation of concentrated phenomena, and the application of such ideas in physical, biological, social and meteorological sciences. Dr. Tse has expertise in applied mathematical analysis of singularly perturbed differential equations, nonlocal eigenvalue value problems (NLEP), numerical bifurcation and continuation methods, coupled partial differential equation systems on flat and curved domains, high-performance computing (HPC) for agent-based model simulation, hypothesis generation and satellite and experimental data assimilation. Current research of Dr. Tse focuses on pattern formation in biological morphogenesis, for example, the formation of fingers, organs, hair follicles etc. Employing a range of tools from applied mathematics and computational biology, he seeks to understand models of biological pattern formation (and deformation) arising from a systems biology perspective.
TWU faculty promotions in 2024
Please join us in congratulating the following faculty members on their promotions:
Divine Agodzo, Promoted to Sessional Assistant Professor of Media + Communication
Divine Agodzo has 20 years combined experience in journalism, strategic corporate/organizational communication, public relations, and business communication. Agodzo’s journalism experience includes working as a magazine staff writer in Ghana and as a freelancer for Canadian publications including The Montreal Gazette, Enterprise magazine, and various community newspapers. Agodzo served in both agency and in-house roles in public relations, with a focus on writing communication collateral such as news/media products, speeches for company executives, employee engagement messages from business leaders, and corporate reports (annual reports, accountability reports, etc.), to name a few. His public relations portfolio includes projects for clients including Okanagan wineries, Canadian financial institutions, B.C. government ministries/agencies, professional associations, and non-profits. He is chair of TWU's Department of Media + Communication.
Russell Leng, Promoted to Sessional Assistant Professor of Art + Design
Russell Leng is an artist making and working in the Fraser Valley, on the traditional ancestral unceded territory of the Stó:lō people. His art practice materializes at the boundaries of a wide range of practices, often exploring the complexities of longing and loss. In 2015 he was shortlisted for the RBC Painting Prize, the same year he joined Trinity Western University’s School of the Arts Media + Culture as a Sessional Instructor of Art + Design. Leng's work has been collected and exhibited at galleries across Canada and internationally in U.S., U.K., Taiwan, Germany, and Denmark.
Chen Liu, Promoted to Professor of Business
Chen Liu conducts empirial research in corporate finance, financial institutions, and entrepreneurship. Specifically, her research areas span topics that include private equity, venture capital, leveraged buyout (LBO), merger & acquisition (M&A), banking & debt contracting, entrepreneurial finance, and fintech. Her work has been presented at numerous international conferences including Financial Management Association, Northern Finance Association, Eastern Finance Association, and Academy of International Business US-West Chapter meetings. On a practical side, Dr. Liu is an expert on corporate valuation. She has assisted companies in identifying good domestic and cross-border acquisition targets for strategic purpose (M&As) and financial purpose (private equity deals), with a particular focuses on strategic synergies and valuation of target companies. Dr. Liu is the director of TWU's MBA programs.
Robert Tegelberg, Promoted to Sessional Assistant Professor of Leadership
Robert Tegelberg has been teaching in elementary and high school education in British Columbia for 14 years. Prior to that he taught English overseas in Korea for one year. He has also been involved in extra-curricular educational practices and learning environments through several other professional work experiences. He has expertise in leadership and educational topics including experiential learning, servant leadership, transformational leadership, computational thinking, and alternative learning environment.
Congratulations to our faculty members on their outstanding service and significant milestones.
About Trinity Western University
Founded in 1962, Trinity Western University is a global Christian liberal arts university. We are dedicated to equipping students to discover meaningful connections between career, life, and the needs of the world. Drawing upon the riches of the Christian tradition, seeking to unite faith and reason through teaching and scholarship, Trinity Western University is a degree-granting research institution offering liberal arts and sciences as well as professional schools in business, nursing, education, human kinetics, graduate studies, and arts, media, and culture. It has campuses in Canada in Langley, Richmond, and Ottawa. Learn more at www.twu.ca or follow us on Instagram @trinitywestern, Twitter @TrinityWestern, on Facebook and LinkedIn. For media inquiries, please contact: media@twu.ca.