Collaborative, visible, and strategic arts and humanities leader with a record of unifying multidisciplinary academic units, strengthening their institutional identity, and translating institutional priorities into measurable action. Full professor and internationally engaged public humanities scholar with substantial experience in strategic planning, shared governance, curriculum and program review, data-informed resource stewardship, accreditation and assessment, faculty development, fundraising and external partnerships, and public advocacy. Known for transparent communication, inclusive leadership, and the ability to build support across disciplines and institutional boundaries. Committed to positioning the arts and humanities as essential to student opportunity, public higher education, and humanity’s future in an AI-shaped world.
LEADERSHIP EXPERTISE
Strategic Planning & Institutional Advocacy • Shared Governance & Collective Bargaining • Budget, Staffing & Resource Deployment • Faculty Development & Personnel Leadership • Curriculum, Assessment & Program Review • Research & Creative Activity Support • Data Analytics & Evidence-Based Storytelling • AI-Aware Pedagogy, Online & Hybrid Learning • Fundraising, Grants & External Partnerships • Student Success, Access & Belonging • Public Humanities & Community Engagement
ACADEMIC LEADERSHIP EXPERIENCE
Dean of Liberal Arts | Montgomery County Community College, Blue Bell and Pottstown, PA
February 2025–present • Public community college serving approximately 10,000 students
Academic and administrative leader for a multidisciplinary division encompassing the humanities, fine and performing arts, communication, media, and related transfer and career pathways. Provide strategic, fiscal, curricular, operational, and personnel leadership for 60 full‑time faculty, 125+ part‑time faculty, four staff, and budgets exceeding $10 million in a collective bargaining environment.
Founding Chair, Center for Integrated Humanities | Chestnut Hill College, Philadelphia, PA
August 2019–January 2025 • Full Professor of English, 2019–2025 • Associate Professor, 2012–2019 • Assistant Professor, 2005–2012 • Private Liberal Arts college serving approximately 1,500 students
Founded and led an interdisciplinary academic unit created through the merger of six departments at a mission-driven liberal arts college. Directed strategy, curriculum, budget, personnel, faculty development, program vitality, and external engagement while sustaining teaching, scholarship, mentoring, and institution-wide service.
INSTITUTIONAL LEADERSHIP & SHARED GOVERNANCE
Chair, Middle States Working Group—Standard III - 2021–2023
Led a cross-unit team in researching and writing the institutional narrative for Design and Delivery of the Student Learning Experience; served on the Middle States Steering Committee and coordinated evidence, consultation, and continuous-improvement work.
Chair, Promotion and Tenure Committee - 2021–2024
Chaired a seven-member faculty committee reviewing third-year, promotion, tenure, and post-tenure portfolios; strengthened clarity, consistency, and trust through a master calendar, communication plan, mentoring resources, and a new 360-degree teaching-evaluation model.
Co-Chair, Core Curriculum Review - 2020-2022
Co-led comprehensive redesign of the undergraduate core, securing faculty engagement around student retention, cross-cultural learning, interdisciplinary inquiry, project-based experiences, transferable skills, and institutional mission.
Chair, Assessment Support Committee - 2020-2022
Partnered with academic leadership to establish a more coherent institutional assessment cycle and strengthen the use of student-learning evidence in academic planning and resource decisions.
Faculty Senate Executive Board; President - President, 2018–2019 and 2013–2014
Served as a primary faculty–administration liaison during college-wide program review and academic restructuring; led governance processes, elections, committee appointments, and faculty consultation with an emphasis on transparency and constructive problem-solving.
Faculty Development Committee; Chair/Member - Various terms; 2022–2025 (most recent)
Designed faculty development in inclusive teaching, first-generation student success, career readiness, project-based learning, Universal Design for Learning, design thinking, digital pedagogy, and assessment; initiated rapid-response workshops and online resources during the 2020 transition to remote instruction.
ACCREDITATION, ASSESSMENT, & EXTERNAL REVIEW
Middle States Peer Evaluator, 2024–present
MLA-Certified External Reviewer, Association of Departments of English, 2024–present
Chair, Middle States Working Group for Standard III, Chestnut Hill College, 2021–2023
Chair, Assessment Support Committee, Chestnut Hill College, 2020–2022
SCHOLARSHIP, EDITORIAL LEADERSHIP, & PUBLIC HUMANITIES
EDITOR | The Hemingway Review
2014–present • Leading peer-reviewed journal in Hemingway studieS
Direct editorial strategy, peer review, scholarly content, production, contributor relations, professional standards, and field-wide engagement. Mentor graduate students, emerging scholars, and faculty researchers; translate humanities scholarship for academic and public audiences through editorial leadership, podcasts, lectures, webinars, media interviews, and educational partnerships.
EDITED BOOKS
he New Hemingway Studies. Co-edited with Kirk Curnutt. Cambridge UP, 2020.
Ernest Hemingway in Context. Co-edited with Debra A. Moddelmog. Cambridge UP, 2013.
Hemingway’s The Garden of Eden: 25 Years of Criticism. Co-edited with Frederic J. Svoboda. Kent State UP, 2012.
BOOK CHAPTERS
“Teaching The Garden of Eden 2008 Film Adaptation.” Teaching Hemingway and Film. Eds. Cam Cobb and Marc K. Dudley. Kent State UP, 2024, pp. 153-64.
“Annotation of ‘God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen.’” Reading Winner Take Nothing. Eds. Mark Cirino and Susan Vandagriff. Kent State UP, 2022, pp. 70–82.
"The Old Author and the Young Bullfighter: What's so Dangerous about The Dangerous Summer." Hemingway's Spain: Imagining the Spanish World. Eds. Carl Eby and Mark Cirino. Kent State UP. 2015, pp. 128–45.
“F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ethnic Stereotyping.” F. Scott Fitzgerald in Context, Cambridge UP, 2013, pp. 224–33.
“The Cult and Afterlife of Ernest Hemingway.” Ernest Hemingway in Context. Eds. Debra A. Moddelmog and Suzanne del Gizzo, Cambridge UP, 2013, pp. 119-29.
“Tracking the Elephant: David’s African Childhood in The Garden of Eden.” Hemingway and Africa. Ed. Miriam Mandel, Camden House, 2011, pp. 176-98.
"Within and Without: F. Scott Fitzgerald and American Consumer Culture.” Critical Insights: F. Scott Fitzgerald. Ed. Dan Noble, Salem Press, 2010, pp. 34-54.
ARTICLES (PEER-REVIEWED)
“Introduction.” Transcript of Robert Frost/Ernest Hemingway Roundtable from 2007 MLA. The Hemingway Review. 30.2, Spring 2011, pp. 99-101.
“Introduction.” Special Section on Teaching Hemingway’s The Garden of Eden. The Hemingway Review. 30.1, Fall 2010, pp. 103-06.
“Glow-in-the-Dark Authors: Hemingway’s Critique of Literary Celebrity in Under Kilimanjaro.” The Hemingway Review. 29.2, Spring 2010, pp. 7-27.
"‘Can't Repeat the Past?’ Of course, You Can't and Shouldn't: Filming The Great Gatsby for the 21st Century." Bright Lights Film Journal. 66, Fall, 2009.
"Redefining Remate: Hemingway's Approach to Writing in A Moveable Feast." The Hemingway Review. 28.2, Spring 2009, pp. 121-26.
“The American Dream Unhinged: Romance and Reality in The Great Gatsby and Fight Club.” The Fitzgerald Review. 6, 2008, pp. 69-94.
“Going Home: Hemingway, Primitivism, and Identity.” Modern Fiction Studies. 49, Fall 2003, pp. 496-523.
“Across the Quad: Building an Interdisciplinary Community.” Inventio. 3.1, Spring 2001.
“‘Peephole to the Jungle’: A Study of Safari from Imperial Preservation to Global Conservation.” Proteus. 15, Fall 1998, pp. 37-42.
OTHER SCHOLARLY PUBLICATIONS
"Ernest Hemingway, Woody Allen, y los Limites de la Nostalgia." CubaNow, July 2013.
Biographical Headnote and Supplementary teaching materials on Ernest Hemingway for the Heath Anthology of American Literature 7th ed. Cengage, 2013.
“F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway.” American LiteraryScholarship: An Annual – 2008. Eds. David J. Nordloh and Gary Scharnhorst, Duke UP, 2010, pp. 185-210.
“F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway.” American Literary Scholarship: An Annual – 2007. Eds. David J. Nordloh and Gary Scharnhorst, Duke UP, 2009, pp. 211-32.
“F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway.” American Literary Scholarship: An Annual – 2006. Eds. David J. Nordloh and Gary Scharnhorst, Duke UP, 2008, pp. 179-98.
“Going Home: Hemingway, Primitivism, and Identity.” Hemingway: Eight Decades of Criticism. Ed. Linda Wagner-Martin, Michigan State UP, 2008, pp. 479-512. (Republication of an essay originally published in Modern Fiction Studies in 2005).
“Catherine Barkley: Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms.” Women in Literature: Reading through the Lens of Gender. Eds. Jerilyn Fisher and Ellen Silber, Greenwood Press, 2003, pp. 105-07.
INVITED PRESENTATIONS & PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT
“Leading Now,” roundtable participant. Modern Language Association MAPS Leadership Institute. Online, June 2026.
“Christmas in Paris.” Interview on One True Podcast with Mark Cirino, produced by Michael Von Cannon, December 2025.
“Unsettled Ground: Hemingway’s Environmental Anxiety in In Our Time.” Smith College. Northampton, MA, October 2025.
“New Chairs” and “Difficult Conversations,” invited professional-development workshops, Longwood University. Farmville, VA, August 2025.
“From Transaction to Transformation: Revitalizing the Liberal Arts in the Age of AI.” American Academic Leadership Institute’s Senior Leadership Academy. Washington, D.C., June 2025.
“Navigating Change in Higher Education.” Panelist. Montgomery County Community College. Blue Bell, PA, May 2025.
“Transactional vs. Transformational Learning: Delivering on a Mission-Driven Core Curriculum.” Elms College. Chicopee, MA, November 2024 and ACSSJ National Gathering. Online, May 2025.
“The Blind Man’s Christmas Eve.” Interview on One True Podcastwith Mark Cirino, produced by Michael Von Cannon, December 2024.
“Taking the Bull by the Horns: Ernest Hemingway as a Great Writer and a Bad Person,” Boise State University, March 2024.
“A North of Italy Christmas.” Interview on One True Podcast with Mark Cirino, produced by Michael Von Cannon, December 2023.
“Teaching and Learning Post-Pandemic: Teaching and Technology,” ACSSJ National Gathering. Online, January 2023.
“The Christmas Gift.” Interview on One True Podcast with Mark Cirino, produced by Michael Von Cannon, December 2022.
“Christmas on the Roof of the World.” Interview on One True Podcast with Mark Cirino, produced by Michael Von Cannon, December 2021.
“Mind Full: Transformative, Holistic Education at Chestnut Hill College.” Chestnut Hill College Mission Series. Philadelphia, PA, November 17, 2021.
“‘What is Africa to Me?’: Hemingway’s Lifelong Fascination with the Dark Continent.” Sun Valley Public Library Hemingway Festival, Sun Valley, ID, September 9-11, 2021.
“Humanities on the Brink… of Greatness.” Chestnut Hill College Alumni Weekend. Online, June 5, 2021.
Moderator, Discussion of Hemingway, a film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick for New Mexico PBS, March 23, 2021.
“God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen.” Interview on One True Podcast with Mark Cirino, produced by Michael Von Cannon, December 2020.
“Hemingway and the Spanish Flu of 1918.” Interview with Chris Dougherty, VPAA of Chestnut Hill College. Online, March 2020.
Panelist, “Dehumanizing Language in the Classroom.” Chestnut Hill College, Philadelphia, PA, May 2019.
A Farewell to Arms: Hemingway’s Greatest Love Story” Sun Valley Public Library Hemingway Festival. Sun Valley, ID, September 2018.
Interview with David Wyatt, author of Hemingway, Style, and the Art of Emotion. Hemingway Society Conference. Paris, France, July 2018.
"The Strange Case of Henry James's Testicles." Interviewed as Hemingway expert. BBC Radio 4, August 2017.
"'His Father Came to Him': Hemingway's Troubled Relationship with His Father." Hemingway Festival. University of Idaho. Moscow, ID, March 2017.
"The Hemingway Review and Hemingway's Image." Misericordia University. Dallas, PA, October 2016.
"Good Academic Writing: One Editor's Thoughts" University of Idaho. Moscow, ID, March 2015.
"All About Hemingway." Chestnut Hill Book Festival. Philadelphia, PA, June 2014.
“Gatsby, Once Again.” Chestnut Hill College Alumni Reunion. Philadelphia, PA, June 2013.
“What Makes The Great Gatsby so Great.” Interview on National Public Radio’s Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane. Philadelphia, PA, May 2013.
“Hybrid Courses at CHC.” Faculty Colloquium with Susan Magee. Chestnut Hill College. Philadelphia, PA, December 2010.
“Hemingway on the Big Screen.” Chestnut Hill College Alumni Reunion. Philadelphia, PA, 2008–2012 and 2015.
Panelist, Discussion of Tobias Wolff's Old School. Representative of Ernest Hemingway. The Big Read Project. Mid-Continent Public Library System. Kansas City, MO, April 2009.
Ernest Hemingway's “The End of Something.” Radio Interview with Rosie Gavin. Chestnut Hill College’s Scholar Gypsy Radio. Chestnut Hill College. Philadelphia, PA, May 2008.
“Hemingway’s Early Years and The Nick Adams Stories.” The Big Read Project. Spring Lake Library District. Spring Lake, MI, March 2008.
PRESENTATIONS (PEER-REVIEWED)
“Is The Garden of Eden Inaccrochable?: Intimacy, Sex, Elephants, and Icebergs.” The Hemingway Society Biennial Conference. Wyoming/Montana, July 2022.
“Love and Violence in Islands in the Stream.” American Literature Association. Online, June 2021.
“His Father Came Back to Him: Hemingway, Clarence, and the Problem of Fathering.” Hemingway Society Conference. Paris, France, July 2018.
"Dangerous Love: Hemingway, Vulnerability, and Loss in Islands in the Stream." Hemingway Society Conference. Oak Park, IL, July 2016.
"Lost Youth: F. Scott Fitzgerald's Perceptions of Aging." Fitzgerald Society Conference. Waterford, Ireland, July 2015.
“Passion and Strategy: Hemingway Studies in the 21st Century and The Hemingway Review.” Hemingway Society Conference. Venice, Italy, June 2014.
“Woody Allen and Ernest Hemingway: The Limits of Nostalgia,” American Literature Association. Boston, MA, May 2013. Also presented at the Hemingway Colloquio, Havana, Cuba. June 2013.
“Woody Allen, Ernest Hemingway, and Modernist Nostalgia.” Hemingway Society Conference. Petoskey, MI, June 2012.
“Tracking the Elephant in Ernest Hemingway’s The Garden of Eden." Hemingway Society Conference. Kansas City, MO, June 2008.
“The Old Author and the Young Bullfighter: What’s so Dangerous about The Dangerous Summer.” Hemingway Society Conference. Ronda Spain, June 2006.
“Larger than Life: The Uses of Biography in Hemingway Studies.” Modern Language Association. Philadelphia, PA, December 2004.
“A ‘literary career’: Hemingway and the Academy.” South Central Modern Language Association. New Orleans, LA, October 2004.
“‘It [is] strange to have no self’: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and the Hazards of Celebrity.” Hemingway Society Conference. Key West, FL, June 2004.
"’You cannot have everything’: Literature, Popular Culture, and Hemingway’s Sleepless African Nights.” American Literature Association Conference. Cambridge, MA, May 2003.
“Destructible Bodies/Indestructible Texts: Ernest Hemingway's Fictional Memoirs.” New York University Modernisms Conference. New York, NY, March 2002.
"Tribal Secrets: Hemingway’s Primitivism in True at First Light.” Modern Language Association. New Orleans. LA, December 2001.
“Reassessing the Norm: Strategies for Reading Race and Gender in Hemingway.” South Central Modern Language Association. San Antonio, TX, November 2000.
“A Right to Know: The Africanization of Ernest Hemingway.” Modernist Studies Association. Philadelphia, PA, October 2000.
“Re-creation: Hemingway and the Economics of Masculinity.” American Literature Association. Long Beach, CA, May 2000.
“Having A Heart: The Role of the Sentimental in Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier.” South Central Modern Language Association. New Orleans, LA, November 1998.
“Authentic Contradictions: Performing Racial Authenticity Bring in da Noise, Bring in da Funk.” “Borders” Conference. Atlanta, GA, October 1997.
TEACHING & STUDENT MENTORING
Designed and taught undergraduate courses in writing, literature, humanities, gender studies, film, health humanities, and American literature. Advised English majors, mentored student interns for The Hemingway Review, supported student research and writing, and contributed to pedagogical development and assessment across the curriculum.
Selected courses: Liberal Arts Discovery Seminar; College Writing; Introduction to Literature; Literature into Film; Gender and Literature; Modern and Contemporary American Literature; Literature and Medicine; Aging in Literature; American Novel; American Poetry.
EDUCATION
Ph.D., English Literature | Tulane University, New Orleans, LA
M.A., English Language and Literature | University of Chicago, Chicago, IL
B.A., English Literature and Philosophy | New York University, New York, NY
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Council of Independent Colleges Senior Leadership Academy Fellow, 2024–2025
AAC&U Institute on AI, Pedagogy, and the Curriculum, 2025–2026
MAPS Leadership Institute, Modern Language Association, 2024
Project Management Professional Certification Training, 2024
Professional development in change management and organizational change
Learning Design and Technologies Certificate, University of Maryland, 2023
PREVIOUS ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS
Instructor and Coordinator, Professional Writing Program, University of Maryland, College Park, 2000–2005
Instructor, English and Writing, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, 2002–2005
PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS
American Conference of Academic Deans • Modern Language Association • National Humanities Alliance • Modernist Studies Association • Council for Editors of Learned Journals • Ernest Hemingway Society • F. Scott Fitzgerald Society • Sigma Tau Delta • Phi Beta Kappa