4 October 2021 • Faculty Tenure and Promotion Awarded

Hobart and William Smith Colleges Board of Trustees, upon recommendation of President Joyce P. Jacobsen, approved tenure and promotion to the rank of associate professor to four faculty members. Seven faculty members were elevated to full professor.

Effective July 1, Geoffrey Babbitt (Writing and Rhetoric) Joshua Greenstein (Economics), Whitney Mauer (Environmental Studies), and Audrey Roberson (Education) now hold the title Associate Professor.

Eric Barnes (Philosophy), Jamie Bodenlos (Psychological Science), Christine Chin (Art and Architecture), May Farnsworth (Spanish and Hispanic Studies), Julie Kingery (Psychological Science), Justin Miller (Chemistry) and Carolina Travalia (Spanish and Hispanic Studies) now hold the titleProfessor.

"I want to congratulate all the faculty that have earned tenure and promotion. These faculty have contributed greatly to our teacher-scholar model, providing students with the opportunity to learn and apply knowledge to help create a better world," says Provost and Dean of Faculty Sarah Kirk.

Babbitt, who joined the faculty in 2012, teaches courses in the Writing and Rhetoric and English departments, in topics from post-World-War American poetry to literary journalism. He is the author of Appendices Pulled from a Study on Light (Spuyten Duyvil 2018). His poems and essays have appeared in publications including the North American Review, Pleiades, Colorado Review, DIAGRAM, Notre Dame Review, Washington Square and Cincinnati Review. He serves as Editor of Seneca Review and Seneca Review Books. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Utah.

Greenstein holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the New School for Social Research. His research interests include development, growth and distribution, structural patterns of growth, inequality, and international political economy. He is also interested in measurements of development, poverty, and inequality, and the theoretical practical, and political concerns surrounding such measurements. His scholarship has been published in journals including the Review of Radical Political Economics, Oxford Development Studies, Journal of Economic Issues and Development and Capabilities. He joined HWS in 2015.

A scholar of environmental issues, and how they intersect with issues of race and ethnicity, inequality and stratification, Mauer joined the faculty in 2014. Her research and courses are informed by Indigenous studies, political ecology, and critical development studies. Currently, Mauer is conducting research in collaboration with the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe (LEKT) on the ongoing Elwha River restoration project, the largest dam removal in U.S. history. Her most recent scholarship has been published in journals including Rural Sociology, Contexts and the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences. Mauer received her Ph.D. from Cornell University.

Roberson joined the faculty in 2015. An applied linguist, Robersons research includes corpus-based investigations of learner language, critical discourse analysis of media language, and public bilingual education for young learners. At the Colleges, she developed a certificate program which provides an entry-level credential in TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language), and oversees the departments K-12 certification program in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). Her research articles have appeared in Corpora, Across the Disciplines, and Advances in Autism, she is a co-author of the book Exploring spoken English learner language using corpora: Learner talk (Palgrave Macmillan 2017), and she recently published a book chapter entitled Dueling discourses: Crime and public health in newspaper coverage of suicide (Routledge 2020). Roberson is also a member of Vamos 2030, the bilingual education action team of the Geneva 2030 initiative. She received her Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from Georgia State University.  

Barnes joined the faculty in 2004. Before that, he taught at the University of Illinois, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and Mount Holyoke College, where he started the Debate, Education and Leadership Program. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina. Barnes specializes in ethics, political theory, bioethics and competitive debate. In 2004, he revived the HWS Debate Team, which won the National Championship in 2012 and has brought many of the worlds best debaters to compete at HWS. Barnes is the HWS parliamentarian and has served on numerous committees and boards.

Bodenlos has been a member of the faculty since 2009. She studies the psychology of health and wellness, including obesity, mindfulness, stress and sleep. The recipient of numerous research grants and awards, including the 2021 Faculty Research Award, Bodenlos has presented scholarship at national and international conferences and published more than 40 articles in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, Mindfulness, Appetite, Obesity, and The Journal of American College Health. Her teaching and research focus on psychopathology, health psychology and psychotherapy. She holds a Fellowship with the Society of Behavioral Medicine (SBM), in recognition of her outstanding contributions to the advancement of the science and practice of behavioral medicine. A licensed New York State psychologist, Bodenlos earned her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Louisiana State University.

A professor of photography and new media, Chin joined the Colleges in 2008. Her art makes ironic and humorous commentary on aspects of our culture. Most recently her work has been inspired by indicators of climate change, including the increasing frequency and strength of storms and the changing ranges of native and invasive species. Her past work has looked at gun culture, genetically modified foods, alternative energy, and artificial intelligence and has been shown nationally and internationally at venues including the Cayuga Museum of Art, Art Rage Gallery in Syracuse, State of the Art Gallery in Ithaca, and the Millepiani Exhibition Space in Rome, Italy. Chin earned her M.F.A. from the University of New Mexico. At the Colleges, she has been a Fisher Center Research Fellow and was awarded a Katherine Elliott Innovation Grant and a Center for Teaching and Learning Digital Pedagogies Grant.

Farnsworth joined the faculty in 2007. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Spanish American literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has authored a series of articles on feminist theater in Latin America. Her current book project, Feminist Rehearsals(forthcoming, University of Iowa Press),examines various aspects of performance culture, political activism and the womens rights movements in Mexico and Argentina. Farnsworth has contributed to Spanish, Latin American Studies, and Womens Studies and has directed study abroad programs to the Dominican Republic, Chile, and Educador.She teaches courses on bilingual education and leads a Geneva 2030 action team focused on promoting bilingual positivity in the local community.

Kingery, a developmental and clinical psychologist, teaches courses in child and adolescent psychology, as well as introductory and specialized topics in the field. A member of the faculty since 2007, she has earned numerous grants and awards from HWS and external organizations, including a faculty research grant, funding for research assistants, and the Center for Teaching and Learning Faculty Grant. Kingery has authored and coauthored alongside HWS undergraduate researchers publications in peer-reviewed journals such as Journal of American College Health, Psychology Learning and Teaching and Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review.She is the coauthor ofTreating Internalizing Disorders in Children and Adolescents (Guilford Press 2016).Prior to joining the HWS faculty, Kingery served as a postdoctoral fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and as an affiliate faculty member at Loyola College. She earned her Ph.D. from University of Maine.

Miller joined the faculty in 2004. An expert in synthetic organic and peptide chemistry, Millers lab group synthesizes anticancer compounds, tweaking known molecules using novel methods to reveal potential new reactivity or therapeutic uses. Their findings have been published in the Journal of Organic Chemistry, among others. Miller earned his Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his postdoctoral from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He is the creator of the Edible Science Fair and co-creator of Communicating Chemistry, a national food chemistry competition.

Travalia joined the faculty in 2007. She received her D.M.L. from Middlebury College and Ph.D. from the Universidad Autnoma de Madrid. Travalias research interests includetranslation studies,dubbing,phraseology, and colloquial Spanish. She also studiesItalian language and cinema. In addition to numerous articles published in peer-reviewed journals andrefereededited volumes, Travalia has published the bookEl concepto de colocacin en espaol: propuesta de una nueva taxonoma y delimitacin de sus funciones(Legas 2010) and has translated two of the books from the popular Spanish seriesManolito Gafotasinto English. Currently, she is developing a textbook onSpanish for the Professionswith afocus on community engagement. Travalia volunteers regularlyintheGenevaschools and public libraryteaching Spanish to children.