Three Knox Faculty Members Promoted, Awarded Tenure

Knox College has awarded tenure to three faculty members and promoted them to the rank of associate professor.

They are Mark Holmes, associate professor of art, and Nicholas Regiacorte and Barbara Tannert-Smith, both associate professors of English.

Mark Holmes, who teaches sculpture and ceramics, joined the Knox art faculty in 2004.

Before coming to Knox, Holmes founded and ran a Chicago company that designs and builds custom furniture.

During the last several years, he has developed an alternative arts space in downtown Galesburg, known as The Box, which is used as a teaching and experimental gallery for students. He also hosts an annual Artist in Residence program.

Holmes recently has had one-person exhibits of his sculpture and drawings in Chicago and St. Louis, and he is planning two upcoming exhibits.

A graduate of Hope College, he earned an M.F.A. from Yale University.

Nicholas Regiacorte began teaching English at Knox in 1999 and was appointed a full-time visiting assistant professor in 2002-2003.

A recipient of the prestigious Fulbright Scholar Fellowship, he teaches poetry, creative writing, and literature. Through independent studies, he also has taught Italian.

He served as visiting professor in 2008-2009 with the Associated Colleges of the Midwest Program in Florence, Italy.

His poetry has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize, and he won the Fourteen Hills literary magazine's Bambi Holmes Award for "Grotto" in 2005. Regiacorte also has served as faculty advisor for Catch, Knox's award-winning student literary magazine.

A graduate of Roanoke College, he earned an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Barbara Tannert-Smith joined the Knox English faculty in 1997. She teaches fiction writing, along with children's and young adult literature.

Her published writings since 2005 include three works of fiction, several contributions to the Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales, four pieces of non-fiction humor, and multiple conference presentations.

She organizes the annual Carl Sandburg Poetry Contest, a local writing competition. She also serves as faculty advisor for Quiver, the Knox College English Department's collection of online genre publications.

She earned B.A. and M.F.A. degrees from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

Founded in 1837, Knox is a national liberal arts college in Galesburg, Illinois, with students from 45 states and 48 countries. Knox's "Old Main" is a National Historic Landmark and the only building remaining from the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates.

Faculty Biographies:

Mark Holmes

Nicholas Regiacorte

Barbara Tannert-Smith