Adam Weinberg
President
Denison University
Adam Weinberg joined Denison University as its 20th president on July 1, 2013. He previously served as president and CEO of World Learning, one of the premier international education, exchange and development organizations. World Learning works with young people from more than 140 countries, helping them develop the ability to address critical global issues.
Previously, he was vice president and dean of the college at Colgate University, where he was a member of the sociology department for more than a decade. At Colgate, he gained national prominence for his work on increasing the level of civic engagement at colleges and universities. He also founded a number of organizations, including the Center for Outreach, Volunteerism, and Education (COVE) and the Partnership for Community Development.
Weinberg brings to Denison a breadth of experience with the liberal arts and global education. He was drawn to Denison by its innovative faculty and motivated students; its momentum on the landscape of higher education; and its academic rigor, scholarly research, civic engagement and steadfast commitment to the liberal arts.
A native of Texas, Dr. Weinberg’s passion for ice hockey took him to New England, where he attended Deerfield Academy and Bowdoin College, graduating magna cum laude. He studied at Cambridge University before earning his master’s and doctoral degrees in sociology from Northwestern University. He has co-authored two books, Urban Recycling and the Search for Sustainable Development and Local Environmental Struggles, and currently is writing a book on the relationship between higher education and civil society. He also has published articles in The Washington Quarterly, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Education, Peer Review and a range of academic journals.
He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and of the Higher Education Working Group on Global Issues, and has served on a variety of national and local boards including the Alliance for International Education and Cultural Exchange, InterAction and Vermont Campus Compact. When he arrived at Denison, Weinberg joined the boards of Ohio Campus Compact, The Works and Our Futures of Licking County.
KEYNOTE SPEAKER, APRIL 17, 2015
Rosemary Feal
Executive Director
Modern Languages Association (MLA)
Since 2002, Rosemary G. Feal has served as executive director of the Modern Language Association of America. She administers the business affairs, programs, and governance of the association; is general editor of the association’s publishing and research programs and editor of two association publications; serves as an ex officio member of all committees and commissions of the association; chairs the committee that oversees the planning of the association’s annual convention; and is a member of the MLA Executive Council’s audit and advisory committees, working with the MLA’s trustees in evaluating and implementing investments of the MLA’s endowment funds and chairing the Finance Committee. She is on leave from her position as professor of Spanish at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, where she was chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures. From 1987 to 1998 she was a member of the faculty at the University of Rochester. A member of the Board of Directors of the National Humanities Alliance and a past vice president of that organization, she also served on the Board of Directors of the American Council of Learned Societies.
Rosemary Feal was a 2011–12 American Council on Education Fellow at the Five Colleges, Incorporated (Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, and Smith Colleges and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst). Working with the executive director of the Five Colleges consortium and the presidents of Smith and Mount Holyoke Colleges, she participated in all aspects of academic and campus life, including strategic planning, admissions, curriculum, development, and alumnae relations.
Coeditor of the SUNY Series in Latin American Iberian Thought and Culture, Rosemary Feal is also an associate editor of the Afro-Hispanic Review and former senior consulting editor of the Latin American Literary Review. She has published on contemporary Latin American literature, Afro-Hispanic studies, Caribbean women writers, and feminist theory. Her book publications include Isabel Allende Today (coeditor; 2002); Painting on the Page: Interartistic Approaches to Modern Hispanic Texts (coauthor; 1995); and Novel Lives: The Fictional Autobiographies of Guillermo Cabrera Infante and Mario Vargas Llosa (author; 1986). Recently she has written on the majors in English and other languages and on liberal learning for Liberal Education (2009) as well as on the foreign language teaching community for Modern Language Journal (2008).
Rosemary Feal speaks frequently on the state of the humanities, the academic workforce, world languages and literatures, and foreign language studies. Her talks often address projects that she has spearheaded at the MLA, including those that respond to the need to create a national agenda for foreign language learning, to strengthen college and university language programs nationwide, and to establish protocols for evaluating scholarly publications for tenure and promotion.
She earned a PhD in Spanish from the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, and a BA from Allegheny College. Rosemary Feal also completed the Bachillerato en Letras at the Instituto Belga Guatemalteco (Guatemala) and studied abroad in France and Spain.