Carleton College Announces Faculty Promotions

The Carleton College Board of Trustees recently approved the promotion of eight faculty members, effective September 1, 2010.

The following faculty have been promoted from associate professor to professor: Lawrence D. Cooper, professor of political science; Clinton A. Cowan, professor of geology; and Michael D. McNally, professor of religion.

Laurence D. Cooper joined the Carleton faculty in 1997 after earning his BA degree from the University of Virginia, an MA (psychology) from New York University, and an MA and PhD (political science) from Duke University. Professor Cooper also held a post-doctoral fellowship at The Symposium on Science, Reason, and Modern Democracy at Michigan State University. At Carleton Professor Cooper teaches an array of courses in ancient and modern political philosophy. Professor Cooper recently received a National Endowment of the Humanities Enduring Questions grant to support the development of a first-year seminar with the theme, “Cosmos or Chaos: Views of the World, Views of the Good Life.” Currently Professor Cooper is on leave from Carleton while he teaches at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, on a Fulbright Grant.

Clinton A. Cowan earned his BA at Carleton College and his MSc (geology) from The University of Michigan in 1985. After receiving his Master’s degree, he worked as an exploration geologist with Exxon in Houston, Texas, for two years before entering the PhD program at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. He earned his PhD in 1992, and taught at Carleton for one term as a visiting professor before taking a position as an International Staff Geologist with Royal Dutch Shell in The Hague, Netherlands. Five years later, in the fall of 1997, Professor Cowan returned to Carleton and began his present teaching career. Professor Cowan’s principal teaching responsibilities include sedimentology, stratigraphy and paleontology. He has created and run off-campus study programs in the Bahamas, Australia, and, most recently, New Zealand.

Michael D. McNally received a BA in history from Carleton in 1985, an MDiv in 1987 from Harvard Divinity School, and an AM (1990) and PhD in the study of religion (1996) from Harvard University. Prior to Carleton, he held tenure-track and tenured positions first in the religion department at T.C.U. (1996-97) and then for four years in the department of history and philosophy at Eastern Michigan University (1997-2001). In the fall of 2001, he joined Carleton’s religion department. Professor McNally has won more than $300,000 in prestigious external research grants, among them a National Endowment for the Humanities Sabbatical Fellowship, an American Philosophical Society Fellowship, and a three-year Mellon New Directions Fellowship. He has authored two books, Ojibwe Singers: Hymns, Grief, and a Native Culture in Motion (Oxford, 2000; reprinted 2009); Honoring Elders: Aging, Authority, and Ojibwe Religion (Columbia, 2009), and edited a third, Art of Tradition (Michigan State, 2009), as part of a collaboration with the leadership of the Little Traverse Bay Band of Odawa. Ojibwe Singers received an Outstanding Book award from the Center for Great Lakes Culture.

The following faculty have been promoted from assistant professor to associate professor: Peter Balaam, associate professor of English; Amy Csizmar Dalal, associate professor of computer science; Andrew B. Fisher, associate professor of history; Nicola Melville, associate professor of music; and Mija M. Van Der Wege, associate professor of psychology.

Peter Balaam earned his BA in English with Honors at the University of California, Berkeley, and his MDiv at Princeton Theological Seminary. He then completed his MA and PhD in English, specializing in nineteenth-century American literature, at Princeton University. After teaching as a Preceptor at Princeton for two years, he joined the Carleton faculty in 2003. Beyond Carleton, Professor Balaam is developing a national reputation as an Emerson scholar, having been elected to the Advisory Board of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Society where he referees articles for the Emerson Society Papers.

Amy Csizmar Dalal earned her BS in electrical engineering from the University of Notre Dame, and her MS and PhD from Northwestern University’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. After spending three years doing post-doctoral research at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Palo Alto, California, she joined the Carleton faculty in 2003. Professor Csizmar Dalal regularly involves students in her research, resulting in co-authored publications in peer-reviewed journals, an unusual accomplishment highlighted by both colleagues and outside reviewers.

Andrew B. Fisher earned his BA in history and Latin American studies from Stanford University and his MA and PhD in history from the University of California, San Diego. He joined Carleton’s history department in 2003. He is widely seen as a professor who “loves his subject matter” and is able to convey that excitement to his students. Colleagues consider Professor Fisher to be a “promising young scholar” and his work has appeared in numerous venues, both in the United States and in Mexico.

Nicola Melville earned her BM in piano performance from Victoria University in New Zealand and her MM and DMA in performance and literature from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. She taught at the University of Evansville in Indiana and Heidelberg College in Ohio before joining the Carleton faculty in 2004. Melville has commissioned and premiered many works by composers in the United States and her native New Zealand. Professor Melville’s excellence as a teacher is also recognized beyond campus, in her continuing appointment at the highly prestigious Chautauqua music program in New York.

Mija Van Der Wege received her BA from Wellesley College summa cum laude with department honors in 1994. She then went on to graduate school in psychology receiving an MS in statistics in 1998 and a PhD in cognitive psychology in 2000. After a one-year research position at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center followed by a one-year teaching position at Mount Holyoke College, Professor Van Der Wege accepted a position at Carleton. Professor Van Der Wege has also appeared multiple times on the PBS television series Mental Engineering, critiquing and deconstructing television advertising for the intellectual entertainment of the audience.

For more information, contact the Carleton College Dean of the College Office at (507) 222-4303.