Goucher College has hired Dr. Leslie W. Lewis as its next provost and vice president for academic affairs, the college’s second-highest ranking official. Dr. Lewis is a visionary academic leader who will help plan, develop, implement, assess, and improve Goucher’s academic programs and policies. She will start at Goucher on July 1.
“I am thrilled to join such a vibrant and intellectually engaged community. Goucher clearly delivers on the promise of transformative education, and I look forward to the important work ahead,” says Dr. Lewis.
As provost, she will direct and develop academic affairs and will oversee and guide a broad range of faculty and staff members who educate Goucher students in the classroom and beyond. She will also serve as an ex-officio member of the Faculty Executive Council and standing committees for Academic Policies, Budget and Planning, Curriculum, and the Graduate Studies Program.
Dr. Lewis will work closely with Goucher’s new president José Antonio Bowen; senior staff; faculty; the Academic Affairs Committee of the Board of Trustees; and other members of Goucher’s community to continue to enhance the college’s tradition of academic excellence.
“Dr. Lewis has impressed all of us here at Goucher as being a dynamic, collaborative, and strategic leader,” says President José Antonio Bowen. “I know she will look broadly across the campus—not just within the academic unit—to improve and integrate learning for our students.”
She comes to Goucher after serving as the dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences and professor of English at Ithaca College. The School of Humanities and Sciences, with about 2,100 students, is the liberal arts college of Ithaca College, a comprehensive institution of about 6,500 students. Dr. Lewis’s accomplishments as dean include establishing a flexible faculty workload and clarifying scholarship expectations for the school’s faculty, significantly increasing the diversity of this faculty, strengthening faculty governance within the school, and providing leadership to establish the Integrative Core Curriculum for all students at the college.
Dr. Lewis began her studies at St. John’s College in Annapolis, where her academic passions included Greek philosophy and language, political philosophy, physics, and math. After a stint in the workforce as a marketing/media analyst, she continued her studies by pursuing graduate degrees at the University of Virginia (an M.A. in English) and Indiana University (a Ph.D. with a special field in American literature and minor fields in Afro-American studies and women’s studies). At those institutions, her interests shifted from narrative literature and theory to American and African American literature and studies, with specific focus on race, gender, and intersectionality.
Her publications include Telling Narratives: Secrets in African American Literature (University of Illinois Press, 2007), Women’s Experience of Modernity, 1875-1945 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003, co-edited with Ann L. Ardis), “Biracial Promise and the New South in Minnie’s Sacrifice: A Protocol for Reading The Curse of Caste; or The Slave Bride” (African American Review), and “Philadelphia Fire” and “The Fire Next Time: Wideman Responds to Baldwin” (Critical Essays on John Edgar Wideman). Current projects focus on integrative learning and liberal education, sustainable farming as a metaphor for higher education, and the digital humanities. A long-term project focuses on power, difference, and the science fiction of African American writer Octavia Butler.
Prior to her appointment as dean at Ithaca College in 2008, Dr. Lewis held faculty and administrative positions at The College of Saint Rose and Emporia State University. At The College of Saint Rose she taught American and African American literature and literary theory at the graduate and undergraduate level, as well as first-year writing courses. She also served as American studies program director, English department chair, and interim dean of the School of Arts and Humanities. At Emporia State University she taught composition and a wide range of literature courses, as well as geometry and African American studies as part of the Upward Bound program. She also founded and directed the ethnic/gender studies program and co-sponsored the gay/lesbian student group.
A native of West Virginia, where her family maintains a farm, Dr. Lewis will be relocating from Ithaca with her spouse, Marjorie Pryse, professor emerita of English and women’s studies at the University at Albany, SUNY. They enjoy organic gardening, beekeeping, and visiting with their daughters and young granddaughter.