Dartmouth's search for young and talented professors to bolster its faculty has yielded high results this year, with the recent hiring of 17 assistant professors from around the country and across the globe.
The history department gained the most from this year's round of hiring, with three newly hired assistant professors filling in gaps created by attrition. The earth sciences department was successful as well, hiring two field experts.
The hires were primarily fueled by the need to replace and refill the ranks of the faculty.
"We were fortunate this year to hire so many of our first choices to fill vacant positions," Dean of the Faculty Michael Gazzaniga said.
"Many of those hires helped us toward our goal of a more diverse faculty, including the hiring of some women in fields in which they have traditionally been underrepresented," Gazzaniga said.
Seven of the 17 newly hired professors were female.
When Dartmouth hires assistant professors, they are placed on the tenure track in which the assistant professor has six years before tenure review. This system has faced increasing scrutiny of late for the demands and pressure it places on junior faculty.
The professors have come to Dartmouth from a diverse array of geographic and educational backgrounds. A few of the College's new faculty:
-- English professor John McKenzie has a background in Media Studies and Performance Theory. Having received his Ph.D. from NYU in 1996, McKenzie went on to write several publications, including a recently published book, "Perform or Else: From Discipline to Performance." McKenzie is teaching four courses Fall term.
-- German-born professor Veronika Fuechtner recently received her Ph.D. in German Literature from the University of Chicago after a teaching stint in Cleveland. Asked about her first impressions of Dartmouth, Fuechtner said that she "hasn't met anybody mean yet."
-- Professor Piers Armstrong has circumnavigated the world, studying in Australia, France and Italy before receiving his Ph.D. in Romance Languages from UCLA. Armstrong is not teaching any classes this term, but in the future he will be teaching Brazilian Literature and Pop Culture and Portuguese. He is also working closely with the Brazil Language Study Abroad program.
-- Professor Kristina Lynch, a rocket scientist, left the University of New Hampshire for Dartmouth. At UNH, Lynch was the principal investigator on NASA rocket experiments that study processes responsible for the Northern Lights. She has also developed her own rocket that will be launched into the Northern Lights from Norway in Jan. 2004. Lynch currently teaches introductory plasma physics courses and is setting up a new laboratory in Wilder Sciences Building.
-- Professor Xun Shi is a specialist in Geographical Informational Sciences, which applies modern technology to the collection of geographical data. This spring, Shi will teach a new course called Environmental Applications of GIS, which will be followed by another new course in fall 2003, Urban Applications of GIS. In his spare time, Shi enjoys table tennis, reading and developing his stamp collection.
