MiddBriefs

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FOUR FACULTY MEMBERS PROMOTED TO POSITION OF ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, EFFECTIVE JULY

On Dec. 4, the Board of Trustees granted promotions to four faculty members. This July, Assistant Professor of Psychology Jason Arndt, Assistant Professor of History Louisa Burnham, Assistant Professor of Economics Jessica Holmes and Assistant Professor of Film and Media Culture Christian Keathley will each assume the post of associate professor.

With the exception of Holmes, who joined Middlebury in 2001, each of these professors began their career at the College in 2002. Both Burnham and Holmes previously occupied positions on the Faculty Council, while Arndt acted on the Institutional Review Board and Keathley served on the Curriculum Committee.

Arndt has taught a variety of courses, from the psychology department's introductory course to a seminar on animal cognition, and focuses his research on human memory and recognition. He has published articles in Memory and Cognition and the Journal of Memory and Language.

Burnham has taught courses entitled "The Making of Europe" and "The Mediterranean World." In 2008, Cornell University Press published her book, So Great a Light, So Great a Smoke: The Beguin Heretics of Languedoc. She is currently in the process of writing Medieval Heresy: The Church's Struggle for Orthodoxy and Survival.

Holmes focuses on health economics and economic development. She and her colleagues, Associate Professor of Economics Jeff Carpenter and James B. Jermain Professor of Political Economy Peter Matthews recently received a National Science Foundation award to study charity auctions. Holmes teaches a diverse array of courses, including " The Economics of 'Sin'," the economics of social issues and "Public Finance."

Mark Carlough '12 described Keathley, his first-year seminar instructor, as "a professor who really tries to get his students to think about the material." Keathley helped start a service-learning project for the Vermont Folk Life Center and is currently working on a book entitled The Mystery of Otto Preminger.

"It was a temendous joy for me to receive tenure," wrote Keathley in an e-mail, "mainly because it means I will for sure be staying in a community that I love -- both the college and the town.

-Dana Walters

ANTI-KIDNAP EXPERT ALUM ABDUCTED IN MEXICO

On the evening of Dec 10., Felix Batista '77 was abducted outside of an upscale restaurant in Saltillo, Mexico.

Batista resides in Miami, Fla., where he works as an anti-kidnapping expert. He is widely known and has successfully negotiated the release of hundreds of kidnapping victims in Latin America. According to ASI Global, a firm that provides security experts to protect high-profile businesspeople and their families, Batista acted as a response coordinator whose primary job was to secure the release of captives instead of jailing kidnappers.

The police invited Batista to the Mexican state of Coahuila to give seminars on security issues. He was not assigned to handle a kidnapping during the time of the abduction.

According to friends, Batista stepped outside the restaurant to answer a cell phone call. A security camera outside the restaurant revealed that there was an SUV parked outside and that Batista entered the vehicle. However, the police are unsure whether he was hauled into the SUV forcefully, or if he got in willingly.

The incident occurred just a month after Batista said in a television interview that Mexico is one of the worst places in the world to be kidnapped.

Mexico is infamous for its high number of kidnappings. Some independent groups claim that roughly 500 people a month are kidnapped in the country.

Just a few weeks before Batista was abducted, the state of Coahuila made a public plea to reinstate a now-defunct law that sentences convicted kidnappers to the death penalty. Some believe that Batista's kidnapping was a direct response to that plea.

Batista graduated from Middlebury in 1977 and earned an M.A. in Spanish from the Middlebury College Language School in 1991.

-Tim O'Grady