Washington College in Maryland has just bestowed tenure upon Dr. Corey Olson, the author of the esteemed (well, I never heard of it before today but now it's officially esteemed) Website The Tolkien Professor. In his own words, Dr. Olson tells visitors to his site:

I have become increasingly frustrated with the separation between academics and general readers, and I am determined to come out of the cloister and spend my own career sharing my scholarly work with the public.

The site includes a section with Tolkien Lectures and a discussion board (the forum is actually located on a third-party service -- I just like the layout of Dr. Olson's site).

Although discussion seems a bit sparse at the moment, this is one of the few Tolkien discussion groups led by a Tolkien academic. The others I am aware of are led by linguists, so Dr. Olson may be the first Tolkien academic to set up a general Tolkien discussion forum.

You can read more about the tenure announcements from Washington College here. Dr. Olson is one of a group of 25 professors to be granted tenure, the largest group in the university's history. You'll see one other interesting datum about the good doctor in the article.

Congratulations to Dr. Olson. I think this is a milestone in Tolkien Studies, although others may not agree with me.