Six Faculty Members Awarded Tenure; Four Granted Emeriti Status

Christiane Steckenbiller, of the German, Russian, and East Asian Languages Department, receives a hug from CC President Jill Tiefenthaler upon being awarded tenure.

Six Colorado College faculty members were approved by the Board of Trustees for tenure and promotion to associate professor following the board's annual February meeting. CC President Jill Tiefenthaler, Provost Alan Townsend, and Dean of the Faculty Claire Oberon Garcia visited each promoted faculty member, congratulating them and bestowing a gift. Additionally, at the same meeting the Board of Trustees awarded emeriti status to four professors who are retiring at the end of the academic year.

Each faculty member has met Colorado College's expectations in the areas of teaching, scholarship, and service.

  • Pamela Reaves, Religion
    Pamela Reaves, a 2013 graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has taught at Colorado College since 2014. Her research interests are diverse, ranging from the construction of Christianity in the early formative centuries to gender and sexuality in the ancient world. Reaves has taught courses such as Apocalypse; The Bible: Myth and History; Gnosticism; the Hebrew Bible; Excavating Israel, and other topics new to the Religion Department She regularly teaches FYE courses. Reaves also has served on several departmental and non-departmental search committees and was a member of the Advancement Advisory Committee. She played a leading role on the Curriculum Executive Committee during the development and implementation of the general education requirements.

  • Christiane Steckenbiller, German, Russian, and East Asian Languages
    Steckenbiller has taught at the college since 2014, having earned her doctorate in comparative literature in 2013 from the University of South Carolina. She has published several peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and scholarly works spanning the history of ethnic minorities in Berlin, the refugee experience, and the use of Twitter in the intermediate German classroom. Steckenbiller has taught 15 different courses (most of which she developed herself) while at CC, including Green Germany; Migrants Minorities and Refugees; Representing the Holocaust; the History of German and Italian Culture in Film; and other topics. Within the department, she has played a leadership role in the modernization and optimization of the German program. One faculty member commented during the tenure process that Steckenbiller "brought the program fully into the 21st century."

  • Elizabeth Coggins, Political Science
    Coggins earned her degree at the University of Chapel Hill, and has taught at CC since 2014. Her research interests are in political behavior and ideology. She is known as a rigorous but caring professor who is as influential as she is inspiring. The many student, advisee, and alum letters are notable for how substantial, detailed, and careful they are in describing Coggins's pedagogical gifts. In terms of scholarship, Coggins is already a star in her field. One external reviewer of her scholarship stated that her work provided "perhaps the most subtle and important treatments of the concept of ideology in the last decade."

  • Rebecca Barnes, Environmental Studies
    Barnes has taught at Colorado College since 2014, and is a 2008 graduate of the forestry and environmental studies program at Yale University. She has more than 35 published academic works to her credit, ranging from geochemical processes near the stream-aquifer interface to hydrological processes to the role of soil erosion on biogeochemical cycling of essential elements. Her expertise on inclusive pedagogies in STEM fields has garnered national recognition. Barnes' colleagues look to her as a model for drawing a diversity of students of varying backgrounds and genders to her classes. She also has a strong and distinctive record of service on the departmental, college, and national levels. In her service statement she "view[s] service as an opportunity to learn about and give back to the communities that I am a part of: Colorado College, Colorado Springs, and the larger geoscience community."

  • Amanda Bowman, Chemistry and Biochemistry
    Bowman is a 2010 graduate of Cornell University, having earned her doctorate in chemistry. She has taught at Colorado College since 2011, offering courses such as Bioinorganic Chemistry, Chemistry of Art, General Chemistry, and Principles of Chemistry among others. Bowman's research interests include Porphyrin-based metal-organic frameworks, electronic structures of the electron transfer series, and the synthesis of reduced manganese compounds. She has taken the leadership role in the department's periodic review from the American Chemistry Society for its degree certification. On the college level, she served on the Curriculum Executive Committee at the time of its most intense work on the new general education requirements.

  • Kevin Holmes, Psychology
    Holmes began teaching at CC in 2014, having earned his Ph.D. from Emory University in 2012 in cognition and development. His research interests include mental number lines, horizontal organizational structures, linguistic relativity, and other related fields. At CC, Holmes has taught courses in Cognition, Language and Thought and the Psychology of Concepts. In his committee assignments, he often serves as the voice of reason. One colleague mentioned that "… he is always able to be the voice of reason, not by being neutral, but by being calm and rational. He asks questions rather than making statements. He listens attentively and genuinely tries to see everyone's perspective." Holmes is a major voice for diversity, equity and inclusion college-wide.

The Board of Trustees also awarded emeriti status to the following faculty members, who will retire from Colorado College at the end of the 2019-20 academic year:

  • Victoria Levine, Professor Emerita of Music; started in 1988
  • David Hendrickson '76, Professor Emeritus of Political Science; started in 1983
  • Jeff Noblett, Professor Emeritus of Geology; started in 1980
  • Dave Mason '78, Professor Emeritus of English; started in 1998
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