Two Pre-tenure Professors Honored

John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professorship
Scott Tonidandel, assistant professor of psychology, was named the 2007-08 and 2008-09 MacArthur Professor. Established in 1981 by a gift from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, this rotating two-year professorship is aimed at honoring a particularly promising pre-tenure faculty member. Previous recipients include Fred Smith in economics and Russell Crandall in political science.

“I am delighted that our new MacArthur Professor is a challenging teacher, an excellent scholar, and a most conscientious and dedicated faculty member,” said Clark Ross, vice president  of academic affairs and dean of faculty.

Tonidandel joined the faculty in 2002. He received his B.A. from Davidson College in 1996 and completed his M.A. and Ph.D. in industrial/organizational psychology at Rice University in 1999 and 2001. He teaches a survey course of industrial/organizational psychology, and upper-level courses in psychological statistics, research methods, and selected issues in psychology.

Tonidandel’s main research interests focus on applicant reactions to selection procedures and, in particular, reactions to computer adaptive testing. This research is concerned with how various features of selection tests influence test takers’ reactions to the test – addressing questions such as what sorts of tests do people prefer taking and what makes a test fair in the eyes of the test taker. Tonidandel has also recently published manuscripts on the impact of mentoring relationships on protégé performance, how organizations can effectively manage a diverse workforce, and numerous investigations of statistical and methodological issues.

Malcolm Overstreet Partin Professorship
Jane Mangan, assistant professor of history, was named the inaugural 2007-08 Partin Professor. The Malcolm Overstreet Partin Professorship was established by William N. Mathis, class of 1988, to attract to Davidson College talented young pre-tenured faculty members, independent of department or discipline, who demonstrate a love of classroom teaching, lectures meant to both educate and enthrall, and commitment to instill a lifelong devotion to learning as embodied by Partin, the Mary Reynolds Babcock Professor of History from 1968 to 2002.

“Her lectures are of Partin-like quality, her scholarship relating to Latin America has been extolled by peers and colleagues, and her commitment to our students aptly fits this professorship,” said Clark Ross, vice president of academic affairs and dean of faculty.

“I am honored and humbled,” said Mangan. “It is especially meaningful to hold the inaugural Partin chair because it pays tribute to a history professor whose presence as lecturer and mentor at Davidson is legendary. As I look forward to research possibilities under the auspices of this chair, I am grateful to former Partin student Will Mathis for his extraordinary generosity in endowing a chair that honors Professor Partin while enabling pre-tenure professors to carry out research endeavors.”

Mangan joined the faculty in 2004 as the first full-time Latin American historian. She received her B.A. from Vassar College in 1991 and her Ph.D. in history from Duke in 1999, and was an assistant professor at Harvard from 2000 to 2004. She teaches a survey course on colonial and modern Latin American history, as well as upper-level courses on colonialism, gender, religion, and revolution.

Mangan's current research explores legal and social constructions of family in the sixteenth-century Iberian World in a project tentatively titled Transatlantic Obligations: Family and Property in the Conquest-era Hispanic World. She is the author of Trading Roles: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Urban Economy. Trading Roles, the first social history of urban trade in Spain's biggest silver mining town in the New World with special emphasis on the roles of native Andeans and women in the city's economy.