May
21, 2004
President
Announces Faculty Promotions to Full Professor
President Joanne
V. Creighton announced that six associate professors have been
approved by the trustees for promotion to full professor, effective
July 1. The president praised each at the April 7 faculty meeting.
Below is a transcript of her text.
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Bettina
Bergmann, from the art history department and the environmental
studies program, is an extraordinarily distinguished scholar,
say her outside reviewers. One said, “I have no reservation
in claiming that she is simply the best person in the field
of Roman art history in the U.S. today.” She is much
admired for her intellectual reach. “She is virtually
unique among scholars in her field in taking informed advantage
of a wide range of contemporary theoretical thinking. This
includes semiotic, feminist, gender, reception, memory, landscape
and vision theory,” a reviewer
noted. Her inherently interdisciplinary approach appeals broadly
to audiences, and, in addition, contributes to her stunning articles.
She is sought after as a major speaker and has an extraordinary
schedule of engagements.
She is also a gifted teacher—highly collaborative and interdisciplinary—and
she’s worked with the art museum to bring together an exhibition that
focused on Faustina the Elder, our remarkable sculpture. She is also an extraordinarily
good citizen of the College, having been on the Academic Priorities Committee,
the Weissman board, the Committee on Planning and Budgeting, and the Center
for the Environment board. She also led a major review of the art department.
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Equally extraordinary and distinguished is Sean
Decatur from
the chemistry department. He, too, goes fully on all barrels
and elicits the highest praise from outside reviewers for his
research, which is, in a word, world-class, of the caliber that
is hard to sustain at a liberal arts college. He is said to be
tackling a central question in biochemistry: protein folding, “to
elucidate the factors responsible for the stability and three-dimensional
conformations of proteins.” He uses a variety of sensitive
spectroscopic techniques, and his work is published in the finest
journals. The significance of his work contributes to an understanding
of “the mechanisms of protein misfolding that underlies
several
diseases.”
He’s had extraordinary success in getting major grants
and major equipment and in including undergraduate students in
highly sophisticated research and in coauthorship. I understand
they are often mistaken for graduate students. At the same time,
he’s a gifted teacher, and a dedicated departmental
and College citizen. He served skillfully as department chair during the major
disruption of moving into and out of and into Carr. He’s served on many
important committees including
the committee that put together The Plan for 2010 and also the
current Commission on Diverse Community. He is a model scholar/teacher/citizen.
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Now for something entirely different, Vanessa James from
theatre. She is an eclectic creative presence on campus and very
well known within the larger theatrical arts world. She does
installations, museum design, discos, theatre productions, television,
and film and industrial design. She’s
a member of United Scenic Arts and has won Emmy nominations. I thought it was
a coup to make dresses out of paper and plastic, but even more impressive is
her recent Genealogy of Greek Mythology: An Illustrated Family Tree of Greek
Myth from the First Gods to the Founders of Rome. As one reviewer said, “James
has taken a complicated, even overwhelming history and divided it up visually
in a way that makes the development and interrelatedness of these myths clear
and accessible. The book is a real achievement.”
Another said, “Ms. James’s scholarly understanding of the stories
and literature of the Greeks, along with her encyclopedic knowledge of its
history and theater, enriches this gem of a book immeasurably.” Her next
book, Shakespeare’s Genealogies, is slated to be published in fall
2005.
She is a strong teacher, works with independent studies students, designs
productions, and is even at work right now designing our campaign celebration
venue, as she spectacularly did in the past, transforming Chapin Auditorium
into something magical and unrecognizable. She’s given much service
to the College, serving as the first arts coordinator, chairing the theatre
arts department, and arranging several public events.
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Another contributor to the elegance and intellectual life of
the campus is Catherine LeGouis of the French
department, who is fundamentally a cross-cultural comparativist,
having focused much of her scholarly work on Russian women
who lived and wrote in France. She is praised for having a “sophisticated,
highly disciplined, and canny mind” and a “sure command
of French and Russian language and culture.” She’s
received two prestigious IREX grants funded by NEH, and published
a range of articles, reviews, a book, and a coauthored volume.
She is particularly praised for her teaching of elementary
French language and advanced-level French literature and culture
classes. She’s been
a good College citizen, including participation in Past and Presences and
serving on the dean of faculty search committee.
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It’s a pleasure to recommend Lauret
Savoy of the earth
and environment department. We know she’s a great teacher,
a recipient of the teaching award in 2003, and her student evaluations
continue to be off the charts. So, too, is she involved in creative
curricular reform, having helped to draw up a National Science
Foundation grant called “An Integrated Earth, Human, and
Environmental Studies Curriculum” that has had a major
impact in creating five core courses in the department. She is
also an active member of the environmental studies program and
has cotaught across an interdisciplinary range integrating “geology
and culture, geology and narrative, and geology and art.”
She’s both an interdisciplinary scientist and humanist.
As a writer, she’s “blended the cross-cultural perspective
of her ancestry and life experiences with creative and quality
scholarship,” said one of
her reviewers. She does both traditional geological scholarship and nature
writing of rare and haunting quality, including her coedited volume The Colors
of Nature: Culture, Identity,
and the Natural World, and Reading Earth: The Literature of Geology. She
looks at how marginalized groups have understood their relationship
to the land and have responded to the landscape.
She’s also given great service to the College: a pivotal adviser, a chair
of the department, and a participant in major professional activity. All in
all, she is exceedingly worthy of promotion, and it’s a pleasure to
support her.
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So, too, is her colleague in earth and environment, Al
Werner. His most noteworthy achievement is his extraordinary grantsmanship:
he is part of two current grants, totaling nearly $1.5 million.
The first is titled “Collaborative Research: Holocene Climatic
Variability in Southern Alaska,” from the NSF and the
second, also from the NSF, involves establishing a research
site in Norway to study modern climate change in the high
arctic.
On these treks to exotic and frigid climes, he takes Mount Holyoke students
and involves them in primary research. Several student-authors grace his publications.
He excels in this fieldwork environment. He is a particularly gifted teacher
and mentor. He has mentored some 11 honors theses and 60 independent studies.
He has also coauthored some 24 abstracts.
He is also a fine citizen of the department and College, having chaired, organized
workshops hosting scientists from around the country, and given many well-received
talks to alumnae groups.
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