Promotion and Tenure

Seventeen ULM faculty members were promoted in academic rank in 2007, and were honored at the 13th Annual Faculty Promotion and Tenure Honors Reception organized and sponsored by the TLRC and Academic Affairs.

To view Provost Stephen P. Richter's "Promotion and Tenure 2007 - 2008" presentation, click here... 

Download an Application for Promotion or Tenure (requires campus network connection)

Prior Years Promotions and Tenure

2006 - 2007 Academic Year

2005 - 2006 Academic Year

2004 - 2005 Academic Year

College of Arts and Sciences

Back to top

Dr. Ralph Brown III, History - promoted to Associate Professor and awarded tenure

Dr. Brown received his B.A. and M.A. from James Madison University and his Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He has published several articles, including "Making the Third Man Look Pale: American-Soviet Conflict in Vienna during the Early Cold War in Austria" in Slavic Military Studies, "Removing Nasty Nazi Habits': The CIC and the Denazification of Heidelberg University, 1945-1946" in The Journal of Intelligence History and "U.S. Army Intelligence in Vienna" in Journal for Intelligence, Propaganda, and Security Studies. In addition, he has presented numerous academic conference papers. In 2006, he received a fellowship to attend the West Point Summer Seminar in Military History. As a faculty member, he has taught at several institutions of higher learning, including Lees-McRae College, where he was an associate professor of history. Currently, he offers courses in military history and modern European history, and serves as the History Department's Graduate Coordinator. He also serves on the MERLOT history editorial board.



Mr. Brian R. Fassett, Art - promoted to Professor

Brian Fassett 's visual design accomplishments encompass a wide variety of logos, programs, brochures, announcements, banners, posters, publications, and countless graphics in application.

Some that he considers significant:

• Format, style and visual standard for a quality publication respected and praised around the state as art director and graphic designer for Art in Action magazine, published by the Northeast Louisiana Arts Council
• Logo for the University of Louisiana System, one of the nation's twenty largest public systems of higher education
• Lettermark, symbol, and related graphic projects for the ULM School of Visual and Performing Arts
• Logo, poster and T-shirts for VAPA DAY
• Logo, web site, and graphic projects for the Louisiana Lyric Opera
• Web site for the ULM Division of Art
• Web site for the Northeast Louisiana Arts Council
• Extensive "Brian Fassett" Web site to promote the integration of technology into teaching art and design.

Also each semester for approximately the past 30 years, he has directed 4 or 5 student teams to provide free design assistance to regional small businesses through the Louisiana Small Business Development Center.

Without question, he is most proud of the results of his teaching, for he states:

"Not all art students become artists. My students might become artists or. . . journalists, songwriters, filmmakers, novelists, accountants, lawyers, dentists, engineers, politicians or teachers. They will be people of influence. They will, by their careers, their purchases, their memberships, their associations and their votes, guide and shape society well into the next generation. They will influence the design of consumer products, entertainment, highways, suburban and urban communities, airports, parks, governments and governing policies. What I do can influence their influence in a good and positive way. That is the power, and the promise, of teaching art.

"I am on a mission.

"Design is not a cosmetic addition. It is essential to survival. There is a desperate need for good design - for excellence, for good communication skills, for things to be done with purpose and conviction. I entered the design profession because I saw bad design being done. I wanted to make a difference. Teaching art/design is the way to make a big difference. I can affect thousands of people with what I design, but I can affect millions of people with what my students will design."

Dr. Julia Guernsey-Shaw, English - promoted to Associate Professor

Dr. Guernsey-Shaw received her MFA in creative writing and her PhD in English from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. After working as a fulltime instructor of English at Auburn University for three years, she came to ULM in 1999, receiving tenure in 2005. Guernsey-Shaw specializes in Renaissance nondramatic literature and has taught courses in Milton, the Bible as Literature, and Seventeenth-Century Literature, as well as freshman and sophomore general education courses. The author of one book, The Pulse of Praise: Form as a Second Self in the Poetry of George Herbert (U. Delaware P., 1999), Guernsey-Shaw has published essays in Essays in Literature, PsyArt and Mezzo Camin. Currently, she is serving as Faculty Coordinator for the Graduate Program in English.



Dr. James Casey, Agriculture - awarded tenure

Dr. Casey is the Head of the Department of Agriculture at ULM. He came to ULM after teaching Agribusiness for over 25 years at Sam Houston State and Fresno State. Most recently, he was the Department Chair in Agricultural Economics at Fresno State in Fresno, California. Since joining ULM, Dr. Casey has been actively engaged in working on curriculum issues in Agribusiness and finding innovative ways to incorporate the ULM Farms into the academic programs. He is active is several professional organizations, especially in the student and teaching segments. His quiz bowl challenge software is used by the Southern and American Associations of Agricultural Economics Associations. He works extensively with the John Deere Corporation and the National FFA to prepare and administer the annual National FFA Farm Business Management Career Development Event. He has been instrumental in creating a ULM chapter of Delta Tau Alpha, a National Honor Society for majors in agricultural sciences. He has also been active in developing relationships with the Louisiana Cattleman's Association, North Louisiana Agribusiness Council, and other agricultural groups in the region.



Dr. Michael A. Camille, Geosciences - promoted to Professor

Dr. Camille serves as Head of the Department of Geosciences. His teaching and research interests include the historical-cultural geography of Latin America. Because Dr. Camille believes that field observation is important in understanding the nuances and character of a region, he continues to make every effort to visit the regions of the world that he teaches in class. In the past twenty-three years, Dr. Camille has made 69 separate trips to 47 countries

In his research, Dr. Camille has undertaken several projects using geographic information systems (GIS) to provide valuable service to the community. For the past five years, he has been working on a GIS project that, for the first time, establishes the precise location of petrochemical pipelines that traverse northern Louisiana. Public officials at all levels (federal - Office of Homeland Security; state - Louisiana Oil Spill Coordinator; and local - parish first responders) will be able to use this spatially-referenced database to reduce the risk of a pipeline-related disaster.

Dr. Kim Marie Tolson, Biology - promoted to Professor

Dr. Tolson received her B.S. in Wildlife Conservation and Management from Louisiana Tech University and her Ph.D. in Toxicology/Pharmacology from Northeast Louisiana University. She joined the faculty of ULM in August of 1988 as an Assistant Professor of Biology. Since that time she has served on a multitude of committees at the department, college and university level. From 1998 to 2000 she served as Interim Head of the Department of Biology. In 2001 she was appointed to serve as the Graduate Coordinator for the Master's program in Biology, and continues to serve in that capacity today.

Dr. Tolson is an active member of the Association of Southeastern Biologists, having served as President of this organization in 2006-2007, and is currently a member of the Executive Committee serving as the Past President for 2007-2008. In addition to the Biology undergraduate and graduate courses she teaches, she has taught classes for the Colleges of Pharmacy and Education, as well as the Dental Hygiene Department.

Dr. Tolson's research interests are in the area of vertebrate physiology and wildlife ecology. She has directed 11 M.S. theses in Biology and served as a graduate committee member for over 20 M.S. graduate students in Biology. Since 2000, Dr. Tolson has totaled 25 published abstracts, journal articles, book reviews and contributed papers; and, she has been involved in bringing in over $500,000 to fund research in the Department of Biology. These grant monies have directly supported 9 graduate students working under her and another Biology faculty member. She was just recently awarded another three year grant (total cost $166,942) from the LDWF State Wildlife Grants program that will fund two graduate student projects. Currently, she has three M.S. students, one HHMI undergraduate research student, and three Emerging Scholar students working under her direction.

Ms. Barbara Michaelides, Foreign Languages - awarded tenure

Barbara Michaelides received her B.A. in Spanish from Louisiana State University and her M.A. in Spanish from Eastern Washington University, where she began her teaching career. She also taught at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, and came to ULM in 1993 after work as an analyst, translator, and interpreter at American embassies in South America. Her grant writing led her to redesign the Business Spanish class, to develop a certificate program minor in French/Spanish for International Business, and later to develop the new Global Studies program for French and Spanish.

As director of the Global Studies program, she served as advisor to students in the concentration. As director of study abroad programs, she worked and traveled with students to Mexico and Costa Rica. Barbara has been selected on numerous occasions as favorite professor by Alpha Lambda Delta, the BSU, and several sororities. A specialist in foreign language for business, she is the author of workbooks for commercial Spanish and has presented conference papers in this field. After five years as chair of the Recruitment and Retention Committee for the College of Arts and Sciences, she became the Director of Retention.

Dr. James J. Bulot, Gerontology - promoted to Associate Professor and awarded tenure

Dr. Bulot is currently the Department Head of Gerontology, Sociology and Political Science and until recently served as the Gerontology Graduate Program Coordinator. Additionally, he is a Certified Elderly Service Officer and a Quality Matters Peer Reviewer. A graduate of the TLRC Academy for Teaching Excellence, he has received the Outstanding Gerontology Teacher Award and, most recently, was awarded the Endowed Professorship in Gerontology. He received his BS from The University of Louisiana at Lafayette in Psychology, minoring in English and Computer Studies, and received his MS and PhD in Gerontology from the University of Massachusetts Boston, where his academic foci were statistics, research methods and public policy.

A ULM faculty member since 2002, Dr. Bulot has been instrumental in developing the first online degree offered at ULM and has steered the ULM Gerontology Program to be the first nationally accredited graduate program in the United States in Long Term Care Administration. His ULM committee service includes the Noel Levitz Retention Committee, the University and College Retention Committees, Chair of the University Research Council, Budget Benchmarking Committee, College of Arts and Sciences Emerging Scholars Coordinator, College Technology Committee. Moreover, he has served as the Secretary of the Region 8 Healthcare Redesign Consortium, hosted numerous healthcare forums in North Louisiana and across the state, written model legislation on long term care reform and participated in the creation of the North Delta Human Services District.

In addition, he has served as a State Board Member of the Louisiana Alzheimer's Association, on the Alzheimer's Association Public Board as Vice-Chairman of the NELA Senior Olympics, Executive Board Member of Communities Acting to Benefit Louisiana's Elderly, the AARP Steering Committee for Long Term Care Redesign and Advisory Member of Elder Protective Services and was an alternate member of the 2006 White House Conference on Aging. He is also the faculty advisor for the Gerontology Student Association and the Gerontology Honor Society. Dr. Bulot has published numerous articles and abstracts in peer-reviewed journals, as well as authoring articles for regional newspapers on issues related to gerontology. He has presented more than 25 research projects, papers or posters at national scientific conferences and has given 9 invited presentations, lectures or interviews. He is most proud of his two children, Tyler and Alli, and is thankful for an understanding, supportive and loving wife.

Back to top

Since the fall of 2004, she has served as a member of the Louisiana Insurance Rating Commission and has been the President of the Northeast Louisiana Chapter of the CPCU and Chairwoman of the Board of Directors of the Property Insurance Association of Louisiana. As faculty advisor to the Insurance Society, Dr. Berry established a mentor program for her students and oversees an annual golf tournament each year to raise funds to support student travel and scholarships. In 2005, Dr. Berry received an ongoing contract from the Louisiana Department of Insurance to research matters of insurance and economics. She is published in the Journal of Insurance Regulation and the CPCU eJournal.

She has a B.S. in Finance from West Virginia University and a Ph.D. in Risk Management and Insurance from Florida State University. She also holds the Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter, the Associate in Risk Management and the Associate in Reinsurance designations.

Back to top

He has been at ULM since January 2005. Dr. McCown is the coauthor of seven books, over 40 peer-reviewed publications and 100 professional publications. His major research interests include personality, addictions, and treatment effectiveness.



Dr. Dorothy Schween, Curriculum and Instruction - promoted to Associate Professor and awarded Tenure

Dr. Schween graduated from Southern Methodist University with a B.S. in Deaf Education, later adding an M.Ed. in Special Education from Northeast Louisiana State College and Ed.D. from the Louisiana Education Consortium. Her classroom teaching experience spanned 18 years prior to joining the College of Education and Human Development as PK-16+ Coordinator. In this capacity and, more recently, as Unit Assessment Coordinator for the CEHD, she participated in the state-mandated redesign of 41 programs.

Co-authoring multiple grants totaling $289,000, she has sought monetary support for redesign, regional teachers, and special learners. She has authored chapters in the textbook Successful Inclusive Teaching and the accompanying Instructor Guide. Teaching responsibilities include undergraduate, graduate, alternative certification, and doctoral courses that focus upon special learners and pedagogical strategies for all students.

Back to top

In addition to her classroom teaching, Ms. Glaze has performed a large volume of non-credit instruction; contributed to professional periodicals; served as an invited book reviewer; given numerous presentations; produced digital instructional videos; worked as a committee member, presenter, and advisor for various university projects; and written and secured grant funds, most recently to create a Clinical Simulation Center in the School of Nursing.

She is an active volunteer in the community and on campus, notably as a Student Organization Advisor for the College of Health Sciences Student Council, as a provider of technical assistance for the Student Nurses Association, and repeatedly as a mentor for the Emerging Scholars Program. Ms. Glaze offers technical support for a number of university organizations and departments.

She maintains a professional membership in the International Nursing Association for Clinical Simulation and Learning and the International Society of Technology in Education. She regularly offers the students encouragement and professional advice, even serving as the Convocation Speaker for the Spring 2005 graduating class.

Ms. Glaze is a member of the University Electronic Learning Committee, a member of the University Technology Steering Committee, a member of the University Portal Planning Team, Chair of the School of Nursing Resources and Technology Committee, Co-Chair of the School of Nursing Clinical Simulation Committee, and holder of the ULM Endowed Professorship in Nursing.



Dr. Florencetta Hayes Gibson, Nursing - promoted to Professor

Dr. Gibson joined the ULM faculty in 1985. She served in faculty and administrative roles until 2005, when she was appointed Director of the School of Nursing. She continues to serve as a member of the graduate faculty and presents lectures to students in nursing and several other disciplines. Dr. Gibson has earned a Bachelor's degree in Nursing and Master's Degree in Education from ULM, has a Master's Degree in Nursing from the University of Mississippi and a PhD from ULM in Marriage and Family Therapy. Her area of expertise is psychiatric Nursing, and this is reflected in her Advanced Practice Registered Nurse status as a Clinical Nurse Specialist.

Dr. Gibson also holds licensure as a Marriage and Family Therapist. She is an active member of Nursing and Family Therapy professional organizations. Some of these include Sigma Theta Tau National Nursing Honor Society, Louisiana Nurse Practitioner Association, The American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, and Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society

She has been awarded more than $300,000 in grant funding from federal and local foundations. These funds have been used to award student scholarships and to support health education in northeast Louisiana parishes. She has presented more than 50 professional presentations and has been involved in more than 25 professional publications projects. Her research interests center around access to health care, compliance with health care regimens, and cybernetics. Dr. Gibson has received honors from the College of Health Sciences as well as the School of Nursing for her teaching excellence.

Dr. Gibson is well known in the community for her service to others. She has received numerous awards honoring her community support. She is the Co-Director of the Witness Project, a breast cancer awareness project for African American women; serves as a member of the Board for the Monroe Area Guidance Center; and serves as an advisor for the Ouachita Industrialization Council.

Ms. Sandra Jones, Nursing - awarded Tenure

Sandra Jones has been a ULM nursing faculty member for eight years. She graduated in 1986 from Northeast Louisiana University with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing and completed her Master of Science in Nursing Education from Northwestern State University in 2001. Sandra's area of specialty has been in medical-surgical nursing where she has practiced for 21 years and continues her practice

Sandra teaches in the second semester of the professional nursing program where she functions as lead teacher of the nursing interventions course. Currently working with laboratory simulations, Sandra serves on the Clinical Simulations Committee for the School of Nursing which is involved with the development of a state-of-the-art simulation laboratory for nursing and other health science students. Further ULM committee work includes member of University Convocation Committee and College of Health Sciences Budget Committee. She has functioned as co-chair/chair of the School of Nursing Assessment and Evaluation committee and member of the School of Nursing Curriculum Committee and Admissions and Academics Standards Committee. Past committee work has been with the School of Nursing Convocation Committee and Public Relations Committee

Sandra enjoys working with the Boy Scout Explorer Post, where she presents career information on nursing to high school students. She does additional recruitment work at career fairs and area high schools.

Sandra is a member of Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing. She was awarded Nursing Stars 2004 - Nurse Educator of the Year and in 2003, the Sister Anne Marie Twohig Professorship in Nursing.

Back to top