Promotions Recognize Faculty Across the Disciplines

by Carol Brévart-Demm
3/18/2009 

Sara Hiebert Burch '79

The Board of Managers recently approved the promotion of five members of the faculty from associate to full professor: Biologist Sara Hiebert Burch '79 studies hypometabolic states (hibernation and its short-term counterpart, daily torpor) in small birds and mammals.

Ted Fernald

Linguist Ted Fernald is a semanticist interested in the distinction between individual and stage-level predicates, negative polarity items, generic sentences, definite and indefinite descriptions, and all things to do with Navajo syntax and semantics.

Nora Johnson

English literature scholar Nora Johnson specializes in the Renaissance, particularly Shakespeare and theater history, and also teaches courses on Milton, comedy as a genre, 20th-century lesbian fiction, and other topics.

Paul Rablen

Organic chemist Paul Rablen's laboratory research focuses on fundamental questions about the relationship between structure, stability, and reactivity in organic compounds, and on the mechanistic pathways of organic reactions.

Patricia White

Film-and-media-studies scholar Patricia White is a graduate of Yale's first class of film studies majors and author or editor of three books on cinema-with one in progress on global women filmmakers.

Catherine Crouch

Two faculty members were promoted from assistant to associate professor: Catherine Crouch, a physicist whose research involves the technique of microphotoluminescence, was promoted to associate professor of physics with continuous tenure.

Jane Gillham

Jane Gillham, a psychologist whose major research and clinical interests are at the intersection of clinical psychology, developmental psychology, and education, was also promoted, in a nontenured position, from assistant to associate professor of psychology.