Trustees approve tenure for five, promotions for two

At their regular spring meeting on April 30, 2005, the College's trustees approved tenure and promotion recommendations for fourteen Kenyon faculty members.

Awarded tenure, or appointment without limit, and promotion to the rank of associate professor were:

*Theodore Buehrer, who joined the music faculty in 1998. Winner of a Whiting Teaching Fellowship in 2002 and a Whiting Summer Stipend last year, he is a specialist in music theory, jazz studies, twentieth-century music analysis, and composition. Buehrer, who is also a composer, is currently examining the music of jazz pianist, composer, and arranger Mary Lou Williams. A 1991 graduate of the College, he earned his doctorate at Indiana University.

*Balinda Craig-Quijada, a member of the dance faculty since 2000. Her areas of expertise include choreography, dance history, contemporary modern dance, and ballet. Active as both a choreographer and a performer, Craig-Quijada works with local and regional companies and with the American College Dance Festival Association, of which she is a board member. She earned her B.A. from the University of Iowa and an M.F.A. from Ohio State University.

*Karen Hicks, who joined the biology faculty in 1999. A specialist in plant biology and genetics, she conducts research involving genetic and molecular analysis of photoperiodic flowering in Arabidopsis thaliana, a plant in the mustard family, with support from the National Science Foundation. Hicks is also a faculty member in biochemistry and molecular biology. A graduate of Swarthmore College, she earned her doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

*Marla Kohlman, who came to Kenyon in 1998 as a Dissertation Fellow and joined the sociology faculty in 1999. Her areas of special interest include gender and power, racial and ethnic identities, and sexual harassment in the labor market and the military. A practicing lawyer before going on to complete her doctorate, Kohlman is also a member of the faculties of the African and African-American studies and women's and gender studies programs. She earned her B.A. from Haverford College, a J.D. from American University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland.

*Janet McAdams, who joined the English faculty in 1999 as the first incumbent of the Robert B. Hubbard Chair in Poetry. A winner of a 2001 American Book Award for The Island of Lost Luggage, a poetry collection, she teaches courses in fiction and poetry writing and Native American literature. In 2002, McAdams was named "Mentor of the Year" by the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers. A graduate of the University of Alabama, she earned her doctorate at Emory University.

Promotions, both to full professor, went to two faculty members:

*Clara Román-Odio of modern languages and literatures, who joined the Spanish faculty in 1992. She is a specialist in Latin American literature and culture, with a particular interest in the poetry of Octavio Paz. Also a faculty member in the international studies program, Román-Odio has been a leader in the use of multimedia approaches to language instruction. She holds a B.A. from the University of Puerto Rico and a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina.

*Timothy Shutt of English and the Integrated Program in Humane Studies (IPHS). A member of the faculty since 1986, he teaches medieval and Renaissance literature in the English department and addresses the liberal arts more broadly in IPHS. Shutt, a former secretary and chair of the faculty, is a winner of the Trustee Teaching Excellence Award and a two-time winner of the Senior Cup. A graduate of Yale University, he earned his doctorate at the University of Virginia.

Eight members of the faculty successfully completed pre-tenure reviews. They are Nuh Aydin of mathematics; Julie Brodie of dance; Jay Corrigan of economics; Sheryl Hemkin of chemistry; Matthew Maguire of history and IPHS; Robert Mauck of biology; Adam Serfass of classics and IPHS; and Henry Spiller of music and anthropology.