LEWISTON — The Bates College Board of Trustees recently voted to tenure five faculty members, as recommended by the Faculty Committee on Personnel, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty Jill Reich and President Elaine Tuttle Hansen.

The faculty members were awarded tenure effective immediately, with promotion from assistant professor to associate professor to take effect in August at the start of the college’s academic year.

They are: Helen C. Boucher, Department of Psychology; Gina A. Fatone, Department of Music; B. Christine McDowell, Department of Theater and Rhetoric; Karen Melvin, Department of History; and Hiroya Miura, Department of Music.

Tenure is a recognition of certain faculty members who are judged to have made and will continue to make outstanding contributions to teaching and student learning, research and service to the institution. Those selected are awarded a faculty position at the institution for the rest of their career.

Boucher serves on the faculty for the Bates Semester in Japan program. She teaches classes on social psychology, cultural psychology, the self, and the psychology of humor. Now in her sixth year at Bates, she received her doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley, and her bachelor’s degree at the University of Illinois (Chicago), both in psychology.

Fatone teaches courses in ethnomusicology, world music and music theory. She directs the Bates College Gamelan Orchestra, a musical ensemble from Indonesia composed primarily of bronze percussion instruments. She has taught at Bates seven years, and organizes world music events annually. She received her doctorate from the University of California, Los Angeles; conducted additional doctoral studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa; and received her master’s degree from the University of Santa Cruz, all in ethnomusicology. She also earned a master of music degree in harpsichord performance from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. She received a bachelor’s degree in music, with honors, from the University of Connecticut.

McDowell is a costume and set designer who has taught at Bates five years, designs sets and costumes for Bates College productions, and works with student designers. Her courses include introduction to design, scene design, costume design, pattern drafting and draping, dress and adornment in Western culture, urban design and renewal, scene painting and portfolio development as part of thesis advising for advanced students in design. She received a master of fine arts degree in set and costume design from the Yale School of Drama in New Haven. She earned a bachelor’s degree in theater arts from Brandeis University. She participated in the Attingham Summer School for the Study of Decorative Arts in Derbyshire, England.

Melvin is a historian with research interests in colonial Mexico, and especially the role of the church and religion in Mexico and the early modern world. Among the courses she teaches at Bates are an introduction to Latin American history; the city in Latin America; the age of independence in Latin America; the Mexican Revolution; the Spanish Inquisition; and a short term course on travel and tourism in Latin America. She has taught at Bates five years. She received her doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, and her bachelor’s degree, with honors, from Boston University, both in history.

Miura is the conductor of the Bates College Orchestra and a respected composer whose musical interests span continents and centuries. A native of Japan, he works with ancient Japanese instruments and explores ways of incorporating them into the contemporary idiom. A Bates faculty member for five years, Miura teaches music theory; composition; music and cinema; introduction to listening and orchestration. Prior to Bates, Miura was a teaching fellow and assistant orchestra conductor at Columbia University.

Miura received a doctorate of musical arts in composition and a master’s degree in composition from Columbia. He received his bachelor’s degree in music composition from McGill University.