Four of the new faculty members who greeted students returning to classes this fall were hired on continuing (tenure-track) contracts.

Carleen Mandolfo (religious studies)
Careleen Mandolfo is a specialist in the Hebrew Bible. She earned her B.A. from California State University and an M.A. from Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley. Her Ph.D. is from Emory University, where her dissertation was titled "The Dialogue Between Faith and Experience: Voicing in Psalms? of Lament."

Mandolfo brings seven years of teaching experience to Colby. She is fluent in Hebrew, Aramaic, Akkadian, Ugaritic, Greek, German and French. She has three book projects in progress.

Walter Hatch (government)
Walter Hatch is a former journalist whose experience includes stints with CBS News and The Seattle Times, where he was a business and political reporter.

Hatch, a graduate of Macalester College, went on to earn an M.A. in international studies and a Ph.D. in political economy from the University of Washington. He has taught at the University of Washington and in Japan and is the author of Asia in Japan's Embrace: Building a Regional Production Alliance. He has contributed to books on Asian technology and Vietnam's place in Japan's Regional Production Alliance.

He reads and speaks Japanese fluently.

Jason Long (economics)
Long earned his B.A. in economics from Wheaton College and his M.S. and Ph.D. in economics from Northwestern University. His specialties include economic history, labor economics and applied econometrics. He taught for three years at Northwestern before coming to Colby.

His published papers include "Urbanization, Internal Migration, and Occupational Mobility in Victorian Britain" and "Estimating Labour Market Matching Functions." Long has three works in progress on labor mobility in the U.K. and U.S.

Laura Chakravarty Box (theater and dance)
Box was a visiting guest artist at Colby last spring. She earned an A.A. in theater from Los Angeles City College, a B.A. in linguistics from California State University, an M.A. in drama from San Diego State University and a Ph.D. in theater from the University of Hawaii.