** 2024 Commencement Updates **

** 2024 Commencement Updates **

HU Announces Faculty Promotions and Tenure

LAS VEGAS, NM – Two Highlands associate professors have been promoted to full professors and eight faculty members have received tenure.

Associate professors Todd Christensen, art, and Jesus Rivas, biology, were promoted to full professor.

Assistant professors Sarah Corey-Rivas, biology, Mariah Fox Hausman, media arts, William Hayward, exercise science, Lara Heflin, clinical psychology, Jason McIntosh, English, David Pan, psychology, and Emily Williams, special education, received tenure and promotion to associate professor. Jay Lee, exercise physiology, who was hired at Highlands as an associate professor, has been granted tenure.

“I applaud the hard work, exceptional teaching, research, and commitment of the outstanding faculty recently promoted and or tenured,” said Highlands President Sam Minner. “Academic promotion and tenure is not awarded by an institution. It is earned by faculty members demonstrating high and consistent commitment to excellence. Each of these faculty members earned these academic distinctions because they are dedicated to our students, the disciplines they love, and Highlands University. Tenure is particularly important as a safeguard of academic freedom. Faculty must be free to pursue truth as they see fit and unfettered from social, economic, and or political dynamics swirling around them. In this way, academic freedom embodied in tenure benefits us all.”

To receive full-professor status at Highlands, a faculty member must have demonstrated a high level of teaching performance for five years as an associate professor, a strong history of research and recognized contributions in scholarship or creative work.

To earn the rank of associate professor, a faculty member must have demonstrated a high level of teaching for five years as an assistant professor, have obtained tenure, contributed to the Highlands community and served as a professional and faculty leadership role model.