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Volume CXXXIII, Number 15 |
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Trustees grant tenure to nine professors
PRIYA SRIDHAR
STAFF WRITER
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| Peter Coviello was one of nine professors approved for tenure by the trustees. (Jennifer Lee, Bowdoin Orient) |
The Board of Trustees promoted nine professors-Pamela Ballinger, Rachel J. Beane, Eric L. Chown, Thomas D. Conlan, Peter Coviello, Paul Friedland, Marc J. Hetherington, Barry A. Logan, and Michael F. Palopoli-to the rank of Assistant Professor with tenure recently. The changes go into effect on July 1, 2004.
Promotion to the rank of Associate Professor with tenure is a long and thorough process. According to the faculty handbook, the Board of Trustees evaluates candidates based on "teaching, scholarly or artistic engagement and contributions to the College community." The committee determines whether a candidate has fulfilled these requirements based upon a packet of materials submitted by the candidate, letters of evaluation, and materials supplied by the candidate's department.
Students previously enrolled in a course taught by a tenure candidate can also submit letters about the candidate for the committee to review.
Candidates must submit their packets of material in September, beginning the tenure evaluation processs. According to the handbook, there is never a set number of tenure positions availabe. However, "tenure will be influenced by such particular circumstances as curricular and other institutional needs" and can vary from year to year.
Ballinger, a member of the anthropology department, "works on questions of memory, identity, refugees and displacement, Italian fascism, and the methodological intersections between history and anthropology." With a special area of expertise in the Italy and the former Yugoslavia/Balkans area, she wrote History in Exile: Memory and Identity at the Borders of the Balkans four years after she joined the Bowdoin faculty in 1998.
Rachel Beane, a geology teacher, teaches classes on physical geology, geological field methods, mineralogy, structural geology, igneous and metamorphic petrology, and mountain belts and is known for her class field trips to study local geology.
Besides teaching computer science courses in artificial intelligence, cognitive architecture, and computer programming, Eric Chown also enjoys researching the learning in humans and machines. Three years ago, he was awarded a five-year National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Grant that was used to buy specialized robots for his project-"Computational Models of Space in Navigation and Other Domains." Chown has used these robots in several of his classes.
Thomas D. Conlan, a professor of Asian studies and history, teaches courses on Japanese history that deal with Japan's court society during the Heian period of Japanese history, but specializes in ancient and medieval Japanese history.
Peter Coviello not only teaches courses in antebellum American literature, early American literature, poetry, and the Harlem Renaissance in his role as an English professor, but also teaches courses in psychoanalytic theory, lesbian and gay studies, and women's studies.
Paul Friedland led courses on the French Revolution, modern France, the 18th century and the birth of the "age of reason"-the concept of modernity and its critics, and crime and punishment in modern Europe.
Barry A. Logan, a biology professor, has taught courses in plant physiology, plant responses to the environment, and free radicals and antioxidants. Because of his research on plant physiological ecology, photosynthesis, and antioxidants, he was part of a group of researchers awarded a USDA grant for "Testing Transgenic Cotton with Elevated Antioxidants."
Another biology professor to earn tenure, Michael F. Palopoli, has taught courses covering evolutionary biology often including his special interest in evolutionary genetics. He is presently working on a research project funded by a three-year National Science Foundation grant concerning nematode species in the genus Caenorhabditis. Besides his nematode research projects, Palpoli is working with students and other members of the biology department on projects about the molecular identification of ectomycorrhizal fungi across a dune chronosequence and the molecular population genetics of human follicle mites.
Marc J. Hetherington, a government and legal studies professor, has never been given a bad review on the infamous ratemyprofessors.com website. Although he was just promoted to assistant professor with tenure, Hetherington will be completing his last year at Bowdoin. His wife, Suzanne Globetti, also a very popular political science professor at Bowdoin, is pregnant and due to have her second child in the summer. The couple decided to move to Tennessee to be closer to the children's grandparents.
Globetti and Hetherington have jobs lined up at Vanderbilt University. "Vanderbilt is going to be doing a lot of new hiring in the next couple of years to be the best political science departments in the country and I think it has the resources and capability to do that," Hetherington said.
In his six-year career at Bowdoin, Hetherington taught courses in American government, American political behavior, public opinion, and research methods. Not only recognized by his students, he was also awarded the 2002 Sydney B. Karofsky Prize for Junior Faculty.
His special interest on the sources of declining trust in government among ordinary citizens is reflected in his research and he recently wrote a book, Why Trust Matters: Declining Political Trust and the Demise of American Liberalism. Last year he also co-authored the ninth edition of Parties, Politics, and Public Policy in America. Eric Batcho '05 is currently enrolled in Hetherington's Quantitative Analaysis in Political Science Course. After taking a course with Hetherington before, Batcho was excited to have him as a professor again for his last semester at Bowdoin.
"I think Professor Hetherington is unique because his passion for what he teaches is contagious. Even if a student comes into one of his classes with no particular interest in politics or statistics, by the end of the semester that student will be fairly involved and interested in the class. Also, he does a great job of taking everyday issues and current events and turning them into thought provoking discussions," he said.
Besides his role as a professor, Hetherington served on the Recording Committee, the Admissions Committee, and the Governance, Tenure, and Appeals Committee.
"My best friends are right here in the Bowdoin community. I have friends in all different departments. It has been a pleasure to teach and work with such a dedicated group of students and faculty...At some schools it can be intimidating to be a young professor, but I never felt that here," Hetherington said.
-Haley Bridger contributed to this report.
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