Colorado College is excited to congratulate the following five assistant professors for tenure and promotion to the rank of associate professor. Eight faculty members also received emeriti status following the approval of their retirement at the end of the 2025-26 academic year. One additional faculty member was bestowed emeriti status in memoriam following her passing earlier this academic year. The faculty promotions were presented during the Colorado College Board of Trustees meeting Feb. 19-21, 2026, and will go into effect on July 1, 2026.
The faculty promotions come from four departments: Music, Sociology, Physics, and English.
Liliana Carrizo, Associate Professor of Music and the Christine S. Johnson Distinguished Professor of Music
Since joining CC in 2020, Carrizo has made major contributions to the Department of Music. The Music Department describes Carrizo as the epitome of a teacher-scholar at CC— deeply committed to her students, advancing scholarship that reverberates across her discipline, and leading with generosity, care, and purpose.
Carrizo is an ethnomusicologist whose work focuses broadly on music and migration. Her forthcoming monograph, Singing with Ghosts: Musical Hauntings of Iraqi Jewish Biographical Songs, is under contract with the University of Illinois Press.
She is an accomplished flautist and pianist and has worked as a professional dance musician and accompanist with several international and university-based companies and programs. Carrizo has introduced several new courses at CC, including Puente Del Mundo: The Musical Crossroads of Panamá block in Panamá. She leads courses through a vision of compassionate listening and community building.
Chantal Figueroa, Associate Professor of Sociology
Figueroa is a public sociologist whose work has been widely recognized for its community-engaged approach and contributions to global conversations on mental health. Her publications include “Mental Health as an Educational Outcome” (Disability and the Global South) and forthcoming work in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization.
In 2019, Figueroa worked with the Ministry of Education of Guatemala to train 250 K-12 teachers on gender violence prevention using the violence framework developed by Dr. Cecilia Menjivar. Figueroa has provided expert testimony on over 90 Guatemalan asylum cases and served as a technical advisor to the Guatemalan Congress on mental health policy.
Figueroa is known for her work as a faculty advisor for students conducting research and has presented with students at several different forums on mental and public health issues. One of her former advisees says Figueroa changed her life for the better and is one of her most influential mentors. Figueroa’s students describe her as an incredible and inspiring mentor who teaches students to be brave, bold, and truthful.
Her classes at CC include Gender Inequality, Global Health, and Global Mental Health Policy.
Cayce Hughes, Associate Professor of Sociology
Hughes entered CC in 2020 and is committed to understanding the causes and consequences of social inequality and how people make sense of and respond to structural disadvantages. His scholarship examines forms of formal and informal surveillance and explores how low-income Black women navigated and responded to scrutiny and disinvestment during COVID-19 pandemic emergency food support programs. During his research, Hughes spoke to the people directly impacted by food insecurity and poverty.
Hughes won the Mellon Foundation “Humanities for Our Times: From Epistemologies and Methodologies to Liberatory Creative Practices and Social Justice” Curriculum Development Grant in 2022 to support professional development for humanities faculty working with CC’s curriculum and ongoing work towards becoming an antiracist institution.
Hughes was also awarded the 2025 Social Science Executive Committee Research Grant and the 2023 Dean's Special Opportunities Research Grant.
Hughes is a gifted interviewer and an engaging, student-centered teacher. His students love getting to hear about and see his research in classes with him.
His courses at CC include Urban Sociology, Deviance and Social Control, and Emancipatory Sociology.
Adam Light, Associate Professor of Physics
Light is a passionate teacher who continuously mentors and advises students conducting research. Since arriving on campus in 2019, Light has advised 29 research students. Light takes several students for paid research during the summer and offers a block of research during the academic year.
Light researches atmospheric pressure plasma physics and its applications, including studying the breakdown of polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and the modification of surface chemistry using plasma jets. His current research projects include diagnostic development for atmospheric pressure plasmas, detection of solvated electrons at the plasma and liquid interface, and particle confinement in force-free magnetic fields.
In 2022, Light was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation in its Launching Early-Career Academic Pathways — Mathematical and Physical Sciences program, which supported his study of the production of solvated electrons by atmospheric pressure plasma as a possible solution to the contamination of groundwater by PFAS. The award also supported CC students in summer research and helped to fund the purchase of new scientific equipment.
The Department of Physics describes Light as a fantastic colleague and an incredible research mentor.
Brandon Shimoda, Associate Professor of English
Shimoda is a Yonsei poet and writer known for his ability to teach writing to students of all ages. His students describe him as a creative, engaging, and compassionate teacher. He is an award-winning author and poet, and one of his recent books, The Afterlife Is Letting Go, winner of the Colorado Book Award for Creative Nonfiction, is on the memory of Japanese American incarceration and includes testimonies of over 200 survivors and descendants of the World War II prisons and camps.
Shimoda’s writing has been published in Harper's, The Nation, Paris Review, Poetry, BOMB Magazine, and more. Shimoda is the author of The Grave on the Wall, which won the PEN Open Book Award, and Evening Oracle, which earned the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America.
His courses at CC include Literature of Japanese American Incarceration, Put Your Hand on the Grave: The Art of Creative Research, and Asian American Creative Nonfiction/Experimental Writing.
Colorado College also congratulates the following faculty members who were approved for retirement and given emeriti status following the conclusion of the 2025-26 academic year.
Rick Furtak (2003), Associate Professor Emeritus of Philosophy
Claire Oberon Garcia (1991), Dean Emerita and Professor Emerita of English
Eve Grace (1993), Associate Professor Emerita of Political Science
Hong Jiang (1999), Professor Emerita of Chinese
Jonathan Scott Lee (1993), Professor Emeritus of Philosophy
Dwanna McKay (2016), Associate Professor Emerita of Race, Ethnicity, and Migration Studies, In Memoriam
Carol L. Neel (1981), Professor Emerita of History
Patricia L. Waters (2001), Professor Emerita of Psychology
Shawn Womack (2011), Professor Emerita of Theatre and Dance
