MIDDLEBURY, Vt. — Two members of the Middlebury College faculty have been promoted from assistant professor to the rank of associate professor without limit of tenure: Frank J. Swenton from the department of mathematics and Wei He Xu from the Chinese department.
The board of trustees, at its meeting on May 5, accepted the recommendations of President Ronald D. Liebowitz and the board’s educational affairs committee in promoting the faculty members. Their promotions take effect July 1, 2007.
Frank J. Swenton (mathematics) received his B.S. in mathematics summa cum laude from the Ohio State University and his Ph.D. in mathematics from Princeton University. His principal research has been in the area of “simply represented knots” with emphasis on the geometric classification of knots and knotted surfaces in four-dimensional space. The 2004 recipient of Middlebury College’s Perkins Award for Excellence in Teaching, Swenton joined the faculty in September 2000 and has developed computerized tools to assist his students, including an interactive linear system explorer and an animation to illustrate the logical definition for the limit of a sequence in calculus. His most recent publication was the article “Paths and the geometry of l’ Hôpital’s Rule” in the International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology.
Wei He Xu (Chinese) earned a baccalaureate degree from Nanjing Normal University followed by an M.A. in English and American literature and an M.A. in comparative literature, both from Washington University in St. Louis. He received his Ph.D. in Chinese and comparative literature, also from Washington University, in 1999. Xu taught Chinese at Washington University and Pacific Lutheran University before joining the faculty at Middlebury in 2000. His book Humor in a Pathetic Dream: The Story of the Stone and Late-Imperial Chinese Literati Sentiments is due to be published in 2008 by The Edwin Mellen Press. Xu’s research and many of his articles and presentations have explored the subject of Chinese humor from a political, historical, literary or philosophical perspective.