Faculty Promotions Announced at Holy Cross

WORCESTER, Mass. – Four faculty members at the College of the Holy Cross have been promoted to the rank of full professor.

Daniel Bitran, of the psychology department, earned his Ph.D. at the State University of New York and his B.A. from City University New York, Queens College. A member of the Holy Cross faculty since 1992, Bitran served as chair of the psychology department from 2000-05. He is currently the college's science coordinator and the director of the biological psychology concentration.  He previously served as a member of the Curriculum Committee, Research and Publications Committee, and Academic Affairs Council. In 2008, Bitran received an O’Leary Faculty Recognition Award from the College. Bitran has published nearly 40 papers on the effects of gonadal steroids on brain function and behavior, including their effects on animal models of sensorimotor gating, anxiety, depression, and schizophrenia. He resides in Malden.

Noel D. Cary, of the history department, received his Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Berkeley, his M.A. in astronomy from the University of Virginia, and his B.S. in physics from the University of California, Davis. A member of the Holy Cross faculty since 1989, Cary directed the College Honors Program from 2001 - 03. Among his many scholarly fellowships have been grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (1995) and the Fulbright German Studies program (2000). Cary was the recipient of the College's Distinguished Teaching Award in 2008. Cary has published a book on the evolution of partisan democracy in modern Germany, as well as numerous scholarly articles on German foreign policy during the Cold War. His most recent research is on issues of memory at the 1972 Munich Olympics, where Israeli athletes were held hostage by Palestinians and later killed. Cary lives in Holden.

Predrag Cicovacki, of the philosophy department, earned his Ph.D. from the University of Rochester and his B.A. from the University of Belgrade in Yugoslavia. A member of the Holy Cross faculty since 1991, he previously served as director of peace and conflict studies from 2000-03 and the editor-in-chief of Diatoma: A Philosophical Review, the College’s philosophical journal, from 2000-02.  He has lectured all over the world, including the U.S., China, Germany, India, Japan, Serbia, Taiwan, Montenegro, and Russia. Cicovacki is the author of several books including Anamorphosis: Kant on Knowledge and Ignorance (1997), The World We Live In: A Philosophical Crossword Puzzle (2002), Between Truth and Illusion: Kant at the Crossroads of Modernity (2002), Albert Schweitzer's Ethical Vision (2008), and Dostoevsky and the Affirmation of Life (2009); and more than 50 philosophy papers published in English, Serbian, German, Russian, Chinese and Slovenian. He lives in Auburn. Christopher A. Dustin, of the philosophy department, earned his Ph.D. and B.A. from Yale University. As a graduate student, he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to study phenomenology in Paris. He joined the Holy Cross faculty in 1991; chaired the philosophy department from 2000-07, and served as the director of the First-Year Program from 2007-08. Currently he is the director of the Core Human Questions cluster of the Montserrat Program—the College's new living-learning program for first-year students. Dustin has lectured and published widely on Plato, Aristotle, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Thoreau, and on topics at the intersection of ethics, aesthetics, and the philosophy of religion. He co-authored Practicing Mortality: Art, Philosophy, and Contemplative Seeing (2005), and is a recipient of the Holy Cross Distinguished Teaching Award (2004). He resides in Thompson, Conn.