Dean of Faculty Announces Promotions, Appointments

Promotions

Two Harvey Mudd College faculty members were approved for tenure at the meeting of the Board of Trustees earlier this month.

Chris Clark

Associate Professor of Engineering Chris Clark has been promoted to professor with continuous tenure. Clark joined the Department of Engineering in fall in 2012 as an associate professor after having spent a year as a visiting faculty member at Princeton University. Clark’s teaching and research interests are in autonomous systems, including underwater robots and multi-robot systems. He runs the Lab for Autonomous and Intelligent Robotics (LAIR), which focuses on multi-robot applications including motion planning, localization, mapping, integration of social systems and control. He earned his doctorate in aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford University in 2004.

Erika Dyson

Assistant Professor of Religious Studies Erika Dyson has been promoted to associate professor with continuous tenure. Dyson specializes in 19th-century American religious movements, church/state relations, and science and religion. She has served as chair of the Watson Fellowship Committee and as a member of the Teaching and Learning Committee and currently represents Harvey Mudd on the 5-C Intercollegiate Religious Studies Consortium. She earned her doctorate in religious history from Columbia University in 2010. Dyson joined the Department of Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Arts in 2009.

Appointments

Two faculty members have been newly appointed to positions in the Office of the Dean of the Faculty to assist in coordinating Harvey Mudd’s academic programs.

Tom Donnelly

Professor of Physics Tom Donnelly begins a three-year term as the Core Curriculum director (CCD), a position previously held by Professor of Chemistry Bill Daub. Duties of the CCD include overseeing Core scheduling, staffing and assessment, facilitating development of electives for first-year students and serving as a member of the Department Chairs, Curriculum, and Academic Affairs committees and the Trustee’s Educational Planning Committee. Donnelly studies the interaction of high-intensity laser light with matter, a field with applications to nuclear fusion. He and his research students collaborate with researchers at University of Texas at Austin where they work with some of the most powerful laser systems ever built.

Rachel Levy

Associate Professor of Mathematics Rachel Levy begins a three-year term as associate dean for faculty development, a role previously held by Associate Professor of Psychology Debra Mashek. Levy brings substantial mentoring experience to the position, having chaired the Harvey Mudd Teaching and Learning Committee and the Education Committee of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, among others. Her duties will include co-coordinating the 5-C New Faculty Workshop for incoming tenure-track faculty, hosting new faculty orientation and weekly professional development lunches for first- and second-year faculty, and identifying and addressing professional development needs of post-tenure faculty. Levy researches applications of mathematical fluid dynamics to biological and industrial problems.