Leslie Lewis came to Goucher in July as the new provost and vice president for academic affairs. A big fan of the liberal arts, blues, and organic gardening, she calls Goucher \u201ca college with a conscience.\u201d Here, the former dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences and professor of English at Ithaca College discusses her first days at Goucher, training for a triathlon, and hungry groundhogs.<\/p>\n
Tell us a little about how you came to academia. What attracted you to Goucher? What do you like to do when you\u2019re not spending time making Goucher more excellent? What did you want to be when you grew up?<\/strong> Any hidden talents? Ithaca may be \u201cgorges\u201d but have you found anything in this area that is charming? What\u2019s your favorite … book?<\/strong> … Musician\/Band? … Place in the world? A conversation with Goucher’s new provost<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":312,"featured_media":663,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7935,56332],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[87541],"class_list":["post-105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-goucher-today","category-women-of-goucher"],"yoast_head":"\n
\n<\/strong>I\u2019m from the eastern panhandle of West Virginia, but have lived in numerous small towns in the mid-Atlantic growing up, then went to St. John\u2019s College in Annapolis because I was enthralled by the curriculum there (a distinctive great books curriculum). After college, I worked for a couple of years in Washington, DC, in marketing and media research. Then I went to graduate school at the University of Virginia for a master\u2019s degree and Indiana University for a Ph.D.\u00a0<\/span>I began teaching there and have been some combination of scholar, writer, teacher, and servant-leader\u00a0ever since.<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Goucher is a\u00a0terrific match for me because it\u2019s a very self-reflective liberal arts college with a history of inclusion. It\u2019s also\u00a0a college with a conscience. I knew, too, that Goucher has a dynamic new president\u2014and I wanted to work with him.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>I have my eye on a triathlon that I\u2019m working toward, so I swim, run, and cycle regularly. I also hike and kayak. I\u2019m also a long-time, serious, organic gardener. We\u2019re still figuring out how to grow some of the vegetables we love; deer aren\u2019t so much the problem\u2014it\u2019s the groundhogs. Somehow they find me wherever I garden.<\/p>\n
\nWell, I still want to be a truck farmer. I might do that next\u2014you never know!<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>In my early adulthood I lived in a series of houses that were, all of them, 1920s bungalows. I know how to renovate and fix things\u2014and have a lot of tools.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong> I appreciate the question on its many levels! I\u2019m thrilled to be near the water again. When I was in college in Annapolis, I lived on the Severn River at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, and I have many memories of the beauty of that body of water. We\u2019ve been taking advantage of the Bay\u2019s proximity and have started to explore Baltimore\u2019s waterfront. Fells Point is a favorite area so far. And Ithaca\u2019s gorges meant lots of hiking, and since we\u2019ve been here, I\u2019ve regularly walked the trails at Loch Raven Reservoir. I have a photo of the reservoir from a walk a couple of weekends ago that I\u2019ve just made my new desktop background.<\/p>\n
\nAs an English professor, this is a very hard question. I have a long-term project that focuses on the science fiction of Octavia Butler. I\u2019ve also written about John Edgar Wideman\u2019s novels. I would recommend Philadelphia Fire by Wideman as response to James Baldwin\u2019s The Fire Next Time.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Anything blues based. I still have CDs (also vinyl and cassettes, too) and am listening to Cassandra Wilson at the moment in my car.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Marjorie, my spouse, and I keep going back to Santa Cruz, California.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"