F&M Stories
Ten Faculty Earn Tenure, Promotion
At its May meeting, the Board of Trustees unanimously endorsed the recommendations of the Professional Standards Committee and the Provost, granting four F&M faculty tenure and promotion to associate professor, while six others were promoted to full professor. A tenured post is an indefinite academic appointment professors earn through a rigorous vetting process. Typically, tenure and full professorship are only earned after a long record of exemplary teaching and scholarship.
The four faculty earning tenure and promoted to associate professor are:
Carlota Batres
Associate Professor of Psychology
Batres teaches classes in evolutionary psychology, design and statistics, and ethics and experimentation. Her research examines the information that faces convey, including using facial cues to make numerous social judgments and influence many social outcomes. Her doctoral work investigated the science behind what humans find attractive and her postdoctoral research focused on how cosmetics influence facial perceptions and social outcomes. She has published articles in several peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, Psychological Science, Scientific Reports, Evolution and Human Behavior, Current Psychology, Perception, and Human Nature. Batres earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology and economics at Wellesley College, with study abroad at the London School of Economics and Oxford University. She earned her master’s degree in evolutionary and comparative psychology and her doctorate in psychology, both at the University of St. Andrews.
Eric Hirsch
associate professor of environmental studies
Hirsch is an environmental anthropologist who is currently researching climate change, adaptation, and the politics
of economic growth. He has conducted most of his research in the southern Andes of
Peru. In addition to a number of articles in peer-reviewed publications, he authored
a 2022 book, “Acts of Growth: Development and the Politics of Abundance in Peru.”
Published by Stanford University Press, “Acts of Growth” is an ethnography of economic
growth in the southern Peruvian Andes against the backdrop of droughts and diminished
agricultural prospects. In addition to his teaching responsibilities at the College,
he launched the F&M Environmental Migration Lab, where he conducts engaged, locally
oriented research that focuses on the environmental dimensions of mobility. Parts
of that research were displayed in a 2022 public arts exhibit titled “Welcoming City: Voices of (Un)Settlement in Lancaster” at the Winter Visual Arts Center. Hirsch earned his bachelor’s degree in anthropology
and English at Columbia University, and his master’s and doctoral degrees in sociocultural
anthropology at the University of Chicago.
Jessica Keech
associate professor of marketing
Keech teaches classes in marketing, consumer marketing, and consumer behavior. Her research centers on consumer behavior with a specific focus on sustainable consumption
and the impacts of technology on consumption. She has published articles in several
peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Aging and Environment, the Journal
of Consumer Marketing, and Psychology and Marketing. Keech earned her bachelor’s degree
in marketing and management information systems at Boston University and her MBA in
marketing from Villanova University. She holds a doctorate in business administration
and marketing from the Fox School of Business at Temple University.
Biko Koenig
associate professor of government & public policy
Koenig teaches classes on public policy, inequality and political polarization. He is trained in ethnographic, interview-based and survey-research methods. His research focuses primarily on labor politics and the emergence and success of right-wing populism. Koenig earned his bachelor’s degree in political science, economics and design & production at Temple University and his doctorate in politics at The New School for Social Research.
The six faculty promoted to full professor are:
Beckley Davis
professor of biology
Davis teaches classes in the departments of biology, bioinformatics, and biochemistry. He teaches classes in cell biology and immunology, and his research focuses on nucleotide-binding
domain, leucine-rich repeat containing proteins (NLRs), novel proteins involved in
vertebrate immunity, inflammation and cell death. He has published in many peer-reviewed
journals, including Nature Medicine, the Journal of Biological Chemistry, Immunity,
and Science. Davis earned his bachelor’s degree in biology at Colorado College and
his doctorate in immunology at Baylor College of Medicine. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Marco Di Giulio
professor of Italian studies and Hebrew
Di Giulio teaches classes in the departments of Italian and Italian studies, Judaic studies, Hebrew, and public health. He teaches classes ranging from Modern Hebrew to Disability Across Borders. His
scholarship has investigated the ways in which the Hebrew language has shaped Jewish
national self-understanding and has traced connections between intellectual movements
and educational models, especially in 19th-century Italian Judaism. His most recent
research focuses on what it meant to be disabled in the Jewish society of pre-state
Israel that was shaped by the emphatically physical Zionist concern to cultivate healthy
settlers. He has published in many peer-reviewed journals, including The Journal of
Israeli History, Jewish Social Studies, The Jewish Quarterly Review, and Modern Judaism.
Di Giulio earned his doctorate from the University of Florence and did graduate work
at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has received fellowships from the University
of Oxford and University of Pennsylvania.
Kenneth Krebs
professor of physics and astronomy
Krebs teaches classes in the departments of physics and astrophysics. His research focuses on the electrical and optical properties of metal oxides; his
group at the Materials Physics Laboratory uses optical techniques to study the properties
of impurity ion excited states in insulating materials. Among his interdisciplinary
research was the patenting of a “manuscript illuminator,” a lightweight, low-cost,
portable device he developed with Shawn O’Bryhim, professor of classics. It uses ultraviolet
light to read lost texts written on parchment centuries ago. Krebs has published in
journals, including Optical Materials, the Journal of Luminescence, and Applied Physics
Letters. He earned his bachelor’s degree in physics from The Georgia Institute of
Technology, his master’s degree in science education from the University of Georgia,
and his doctorate in condensed matter physics from the University of Georgia.
Amy Lytle
professor of physics and astronomy
Lytle has taught numerous courses, including Fundamental Physics I and II; Experimental Physics: Optics; Thermal and Statistical Physics; Electric
and Magnetic Fields; Quantum Mechanics; and Race, Gender and Identity in Physics.
She also has taught Connections courses, including Science: Engaging the Public, and Quarks to Quasars. Her research
focuses on ultrafast and nonlinear optics, especially developing new, broadband laser
sources in the near-infrared and soft x-ray regions of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Other research interests include quantum optics and conceptual understanding in quantum
mechanics. She has published in numerous peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal
of Applied Physics, Optics Express, and the Journal of the Optical Society of America.
She earned her bachelor’s degree in physics from the College of Wooster and her doctorate
in physics from the University of Colorado.
Scott Smith
professor of anthropology
Smith earned the 2023 Christian R. and Mary E. Lindback Award for Outstanding Teaching, in part because he has transformed his courses to be grounded in project- and problem-based
learning. In addition to teaching in the Department of Anthropology, he also teaches in the Department of Latin American and Latinx Studies. He is an archaeologist who studies human-environmental relationships in Bolivia.
He has taught numerous courses, including Introduction to Archaeology, Andean Archaeology,
People and Culture of the Andes, Archaeologies of Inequality, Spatial Archaeology,
and Archaeological Methods. He also has taught Connections courses, including Material
Culture, and Learning from the Past: People and Environment. He has written scores
of academic articles, including monographs, book chapters and articles in Antiquity,
World Archaeology, and Latin American Antiquity. He earned his bachelor’s degree in
anthropology at Drew University and his master’s and doctoral degrees in anthropology
at the University of California at Riverside.
SherAli Tareen
professor of religious studies
Tareen, who chairs the Department of Religious Studies, focuses his research on Muslim intellectual traditions and debates in early modern and modern South Asia. In addition to scores of articles in scholarly journals, book chapters, book reviews, and encyclopedia articles, he has authored two books. “Defending Muhammad in Modernity” was published in 2020 by the University of Notre Dame Press. It earned that year’s American Institute of Pakistan Studies Book Prize and was a finalist for the 2021 American Academy of Religion Book Award. His second book, “Perilous Intimacies: Debating Hindu-Muslim Friendship After Empire,” was published in 2023 as part of the prestigious Religion, Culture, and Public Life Series by Columbia University Press. Tareen, who earned his doctorate at Duke University, has taught numerous courses, including Islam; Islam, Tradition, and Modernity; Islamic Law and Ethics; Sufism; Islamic Law, Gender, and Sexuality; Hindus and Muslims; Reading Islamic Texts in Arabic; and Religion and Secularism. He also has taught the Connections course, Islam in North America.
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