campus news & events

Colby-Sawyer College Announces Endowed Faculty Chairs, New Professorship

NEW LONDON, N.H., July 20, 2007 – Colby-Sawyer College has announced the new recipients of two established professorships, Professor of Social Sciences and Education Randy Hanson as the new David H. Winton Endowed Chair, and Professor of Business Administration Leon-C. Malan as the new M. Roy London Endowed Chair.

The college has also established the Gibney Distinguished Professorship, to which Humanities Professor Patrick Anderson has been appointed.

Colby-Sawyer College established its first two endowed chairs, the David H. Winton Endowed Chair and the M. Roy London Endowed Chair, in 2002. The college selected Professor Ann Page Stecker as the David H. Winton Endowed Teaching Chair, and Professor Joseph Carroll as the M. Roy London Endowed Chair. Professors Stecker and Carroll will retain their endowed chair titles indefinitely.

An endowed chair is a position permanently financed in part or full by the revenue from an endowment fund specifically designated for that purpose. A donation of $1 million is required by Colby-Sawyer to endow a chair. Holding such a professorship is an honor and a recognition of excellence in teaching and contribution to teaching and leadership on campus.

The David H. Winton Endowed Chair

The family of the benefactor who established the David H. Winton Endowed Teaching Chair intend that this endowed faculty position be held by an admired and long-standing member of the teaching faculty. Since the emphasis must always be as a teaching chair, the family determined not to restrict it further to a department or a particular category of professor.

The new David H. Winton Endowed Chair, Professor of Social Sciences and Education Randy Hanson, is a gifted and respected teacher, scholar and campus leader. A historian with a special focus on Latin-American affairs and U.S. diplomatic relations with Latin America, Professor Hanson joined the college in 1996 and teaches courses in the History, Society and Culture major.

Known for his extraordinary teaching skills and rapport with students, Professor Hanson was recognized with the Jack Jensen Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1999, the CASE/Carnegie Professor of the Year for New Hampshire award in 2003, and with a nomination for a New Hampshire Excellence in Education Award (EDies).

Professor Hanson served as coordinator of the college's Liberal Education Program from 2002 to 2007. In this role, he oversaw the implementation of the program, worked with the Pathway faculty, coordinated the proficiency courses and the exploration areas, and assisted in the implementation of the Liberal Education Learning Portfolio for students. He has also served on the Academic Policies Committee and the Assessment Committee.

Professor Hanson introduced and edited the Orientation Chapbooks in 2004 and 2005 and has written or co-written articles about the college's Liberal Education Program for several of the New Hampshire Union Leader's annual education editions. He also assisted in writing the proposal that resulted in a three-year $149,290 grant from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Course, Curriculum and Laboratory Improvement Program. The grant is assisting the college in incorporating the teaching of basic math and reasoning skills (quantitative literacy) across our curriculum.

In addition to his teaching and leadership roles, Professor Hanson is engaged in research and scholarship both in liberal arts education and the history of Mexico. He has written articles and delivered presentations on many aspects of liberal arts education for educators at the local, regional, national and international level.

For 2007-2008, Professor Hanson has embarked on a yearlong sabbatical focused on three related projects. He will seek to complete research on his book about the Catholic Church during the Porfiriato (1877-1911) and the first phase of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1929). He will also promote student and faculty travel to Mexico and exchanges between Colby-Sawyer College and Mexican colleges and universities. Finally, he will continue to conduct research and document his findings on Mexican celebrations.

Professor Hanson holds an M.A. and Ph.D. from Indiana University and B.A. from Washington University. Prior to his Colby-Sawyer appointment, he served as an associate professor at the Universidad de las Americas in Puebla, Mexico, from 1992 to 1996.

The M. Roy London Endowed Chair

The benefactors who established the M. Roy London Endowed Chair in his honor intend that this endowed faculty position be held by a faculty member whose work and vocation combine excellence in teaching with an influential and attentive persona on campus and in the wider community. One major within the curriculum which invites this support is the Community and Environmental Studies Program. The M. Roy London Endowed Chair will be occupied by a person affiliated with this program for the first decade of this chair.

The new M. Roy London Endowed Chair, Professor of Business Administration Leon-C. Malan, is an extraordinary teacher and scholar whose rigorous and wide-ranging research interests directly benefits Colby-Sawyer students. Both faculty colleagues and students alike note that Professor Malan's creativity and intelligence enable him to bring a broad interdisciplinary approach to his courses. Professor Malan, who joined the college in 1994, was recognized with the Jack Jensen Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2006.

Professor Malan's teaching and research reflect his strong interests in the globalization of business and industry and its impact on and responsibility for global environmental issues. He conducts research in management and organizational theory, business strategy, globalization and environmental studies, with a focus on the interaction between organizations and their external environment, including the natural environment.

Professor Malan's areas of expertise include strategic management, organizational behavior, corporate social responsibility and ethics, human resource management, labor relations and negotiations, leadership, and global environmental issues. For his second doctoral program, he is currently engaged in a research project on conservation, biodiversity and tourism, conservation and tourism in Africa, environments and organizations.

Professor Malan is also engaged as a leader on campus and in the community. He was active in the design and implementation of the Community and Environmental Studies Program (CES) and recently assisted the students who led Green ROUTES, a CES project, in understanding the financial impact of a movement toward campus sustainability. Professor Malan has served on many college committees, including the Faculty Development and Research Committee and as a faculty representative to the Board of Trustees. He also serves on local community boards such as the Blaisdell Lake Protection Association and Sutton Conservation Commission.

Professor Malan earned a B.A. from the University of South Africa, M.B.A., from the University of Cape Town in South Africa, and a Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Albany. He also completed the Industrial Relations Development Program at the University of Stellenbosch's Business School in South Africa. Professor Malan is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in environmental studies at Antioch New England Graduate School, concentrating on the environmental impact of tourism in post-colonial societies.

Both Professor Hanson and Professor Malan are admired teachers and campus leaders who will further distinguish the chairs they hold through their work in facilitating discussion and reflection by the college community on the liberal education of our students and though their contributions in the broader community.

The New Gibney Distinguished Professorship

Colby-Sawyer also announced a new honor made possible by a gift from Albert L. Gibney, long-time friend and husband of an alumna, to promote public speaking across the college. This recently acquired fund, which will be expended over a period of five years, was intended to promote excellence in public speaking as an integral curricular component and an expression of the learning outcome to “communicate and interact effectively.” A portion of this fund will be used to create the Gibney Distinguished Professorship.

Humanities Professor Patrick Anderson will serve as the Gibney Distinguished Professor for the duration of the fund. Professor Anderson, who has taught at the college since 1977, is a beloved and respected teacher and campus leader known for his boundless passion for and extensive knowledge of American literature, Native American culture, and film. His areas of expertise include the Academy Awards, contemporary American Culture, the literature and culture of the American West, Native American studies, and 19th- and 20th-century American Literature, specifically the American Renaissance and Modernism.

In 1998, Professor Anderson was honored with the Jack Jensen Award for Excellence in Teaching. More recently, in 2004, he was selected as a George Washington Distinguished Professor/Scholar by the New Hampshire Society of the Cincinnati. This three-year honorary appointment was based on Professor Anderson's research interest in the Revolutionary War era and the early governance of the United States.

The author of a book and many articles on film, Professor Anderson lectures frequently throughout the state and presents film reviews on radio. He also founded and continues to host, along with students in the Communications Studies major, a film-review program called “Reel Talk.” The program began as a radio show and WSCS-FM, the student-run radio station at Colby-Sawyer, and is now also produced by faculty and students as a cable television show. Professor Anderson's film reviews are also featured on Reel Talk Online on the college's Web site.

In his capacity as the Gibney Professor, Professor Anderson will support and steward the development and implementation of the Gibney Public Speaking Initiative. The specific activities involved are not yet finally determined, but they may include establishing and managing an internal advisory group, leading the planning activities for the initiative, presenting the aims and plans of the initiative to both internal and external groups, and writing about the initiative for scholarly publication.

President Tom Galligan asked the college community to join him in celebrating these honors "for our colleagues and as a reflection of the collective excellence of all of our faculty." The faculty recipients will recognized formally in a campus celebration this fall.

-Kimberly Swick Slover


Colby-Sawyer, founded in 1837, is a comprehensive liberal arts college located in the scenic Lake Sunapee Region of central New Hampshire. Our students learn in small classes through a select array of programs that integrate the liberal arts and sciences with pre-professional experience.

Colby-Sawyer College, 541 Main Street, New London, N.H. 03257 (603) 526-3000