March
26 ,
2004
Trustees
Approve Eight Assistant Professors for Tenure
The Mount Holyoke College Board
of Trustees, which met February 26–28, approved eight faculty
members for tenure and promotion to associate professor, effective
July 1. The following descriptions were given by President Joanne
V. Creighton at the February 4 faculty meeting when she announced
her intention to recommend these faculty members to the trustees:
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Kathy Binder, assistant professor of psychology, has a Ph.D.
from the University of South Carolina in cognitive psychology.
She specializes in eye movements and lexical ambiguity. After
a post doc at the University of Massachusetts, she has continued
her work here, publishing a number of papers and giving a number
of conference presentations, all of which received high praise
from outside experts. She is also interested in adult reading
skills and cognitive processes in individuals with Williams Syndrome,
so our neighbors at the Berkshire Music Academy are of special
interest to her. She is a highly regarded teacher, the mainstay
of Psychology 200, experimental methods, and courses in cognition.
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Jill Bubier, assistant professor of environmental studies, has
a Ph.D. in physical geography from McGill University and is a
Smith graduate. Her research record in the interdisciplinary
fields of biogeochemistry and global climate change indicates
extraordinary productivity and outstanding grant-garnering ability.
Since she has been at the College, she has coauthored 14 peer-reviewed
publications and secured a number of large collaborative research
grants, including a NASA New Investigator Award and a National
Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER grant. She is also a diligent
and creative teacher and a superb mentor of research students.
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Wei Chen, Mary E. Woolley Assistant Professor of Chemistry,
has a Ph.D. in polymer science and engineering from the University
of Massachusetts. She, too, is a Smith graduate. She has an M.A.
in chemistry from Yale and served for two years as a senior polymer
scientist in industry before coming to Mount Holyoke. Chen is
on the leading edge of interdisciplinary approaches to polymer
science, materials science, and surface chemistry. She writes
passionately about interesting students in plastics and polymers
and establishing a world-class polymer research program. In a
short period of time, she has had four grants as principal investigator,
and three instrument grants as coprincipal investigator. She
has published a number of papers, given a number of presentations,
and has even submitted a patent. In teaching, she has turned
the dreaded physical chemistry into a popular and loved course.
She has played a leading role in the creation of the new five-year
Mount Holyoke/UMass engineering
program.
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Darren Hamilton, Mary E. Woolley Assistant Professor of Chemistry,
has a Ph.D. from Royal Holloway College, University of London,
and taught at New Hall, Cambridge, before coming here. He is
an organic chemist with a specialty in the field of supramolecular
chemistry. He has published eight papers in top-ranked journals.
Outside reviewers praise his creativity and innovation, and note
especially that he involves undergraduates in all aspects of
his work. He has taught almost exclusively the core organic chemistry
sequence, some of the most difficult teaching on campus, and
he has received very positive reviews from students for his clarity,
organization, and ability to make organic chemistry come alive.
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Holly Hanson, assistant professor of history, has a Ph.D. from
the University of Florida. She is an African historian whose
book, Landed Obligation: The Practice of
Power in Buganda, came
out with impeccable timing just as tenure deliberations were
in place. Outstanding letters of recommendation praise Hanson’s
work for challenging ideas about oppression, social relations,
and the nature of power in Buganda. Students are enthusiastic
about Holly’s teaching. She has shouldered some heavy teaching
loads and has had an unusually large number of summa and Fulbright
students. She is deeply engaged in the life of the community,
presently a member of the Faculty Conference Committee (FCC)
and selected for baccalaureate speaker in 2002.
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Michelle Markley, assistant professor of geology, has a Ph.D.
from the University of Minnesota. She is a structural geologist
whose research looks at how rocks deform in response to large-scale
tectonic stresses. Her work has been broad and varied, taking
her to such places as New Zealand, Idaho, Switzerland, Maryland,
Maine, and Greece. She recently received a competitive NSF grant,
and has produced a number of scholarly papers that are highly
regarded by peers. She excels as a teacher, with outstanding
evaluations across all courses from large requirements to seminars.
She is a dedicated citizen of the department, the College, and
the Five Colleges. And, she, too, is on the FCC.
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Naoko Nemoto, assistant professor of Japanese, has a Ph.D. in
linguistics from the University of Connecticut. She works in
theoretical linguistics with a specialization in syntax. Her
focus is on the syntactic and semantic nature of Japanese nouns,
especially the phenomenon of scrambling: a phenomenon of free
word order in many languages, but not English. She is considered
an authority on the issue. She teaches Japanese and a course
in descriptive linguistics, and she directs the Japanese program.
Students give her high praise for her excellent teaching and
rapport with students about all things related to Japan.
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David Sanford, assistant professor of music, received his M.F.A.
and Ph.D. from Princeton. He is a composer who has received an
extraordinary number of prestigious awards and fellowships, including
a Guggenheim, a Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy
of Arts and Letters, and the Samuel Barber Rome Prize Fellowship.
His works have been commissioned or performed by musical organizations
across the U.S.: the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Chamber
Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Chicago Symphony Players,
the Concert Artists Guild of New York. Evaluators praise the
originality of his compositional style, which often blends African
American music with the music of the European avant-garde tradition.
He is also a charismatic teacher who gets enthusiastic reviews
from students across a range of courses. He is a trombonist in
Mount Holyoke’s orchestra and jazz ensembles.
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