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Brian Rosenberg

MACALESTER COLLEGE NAMES NEW PRESIDENT:
DICKENS SCHOLAR BRIAN C. ROSENBERG OF LAWRENCE UNIVERSITY

St. Paul, Minn.-Brian C. Rosenberg, 47, the dean of the faculty at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis., and a scholar on Charles Dickens, today was named the 16th president of Macalester College. The Board of Trustees made the announcement after a full and extensive national search.

Rosenberg succeeds Michael S. McPherson, who is leaving next month after seven years to become president of the Spencer Foundation in Chicago. Rosenberg will begin serving on Aug. 4.

"I am honored and delighted to have been selected as Macalester's 16th president," Rosenberg said. "The private, residential liberal arts college is in my view the jewel of the American education system, and Macalester is widely recognized as one of the finest colleges of this kind in the country. Its commitment to academic excellence in the context of internationalism, civic engagement and diversity is deep, historic and admirable, and I look forward to continuing and enhancing that commitment in the years ahead. People do splendid work at Macalester, and I see my job as helping with and advancing that work in every way that I can."

Rosenberg was introduced to the Macalester community and the media at a special gathering in the John B. Davis Lecture Hall, named for Macalester's 13th president. He later visited with students, staff, faculty and alumni at an ice cream social on the Bateman Plaza outside the Ruth Stricker Dayton Campus Center.

"Brian Rosenberg will be an outstanding president of Macalester College," said Mark Vander Ploeg, chair of the Board of Trustees and member of the Class of 1974. "He has excellent leadership and people skills and has a vision about the importance of liberal arts colleges and Macalester's role. He has tremendous energy, enthusiasm, integrity and a wry sense of humor that will inspire the entire community. The board warmly welcomes President Rosenberg and his wife, Carol, and their family to Macalester."

Carol Rosenberg is a physician specializing in adult internal medicine. The Rosenbergs have two children, Adam, age 12, and Samuel, age 9.

David Ranheim, a trustee who chaired the Presidential Search Committee, said that "Rosenberg emerged from an especially strong candidate pool as a person who deeply shares Macalester's fundamental values, and reflects those values in his personal and professional life. Those who have known and worked with Brian throughout his academic career, as well as the Macalester people who met him during the course of the search process, attest to this. I am delighted that he will be our next president."

"The members of the search committee were extremely impressed by the degree to which Brian understood who and what we are, and who and what we would like to become," said Harry Hirsch, chair of the Political Science Department. "We were also impressed with the depth of his commitment to the liberal arts, the centrality of teaching and learning to his own biography, and many comments from current and former colleagues about his consultative and inclusive leadership style. It is hard to imagine a better fit for Macalester."

"I think he's going to relate very well with alumni," said Kathleen Pinkett, Class of 1975, and an alumni board member of the Search Committee. "I'm very impressed with his sincerity regarding the importance of relationships and the role the alumni community can play in advancing the goals of the college."

Outgoing President McPherson had high praise for Rosenberg.

"I think it is a wonderful choice and I commend the Presidential Search Committee and the Board of Trustees for their excellent work," McPherson said. "Brian's leadership as the chief academic officer at Lawrence has been outstanding. He understands the world of liberal arts colleges and, from my conversations with him, I know that he understands well the distinctive characteristics that make Macalester such an exceptional place. Marge and I are pleased to welcome Brian, Carol and their two sons to Macalester College and St. Paul, and we hope that their experience will prove as rewarding as ours has been."

Rosenberg has been the dean of the faculty and an English professor at Lawrence since 1998. He was responsible for all academic programs, athletics, the library, instructional technology and the art gallery. He directed the design and passage of the university's first new general education requirements in 15 years, created the college's first mentoring program for new faculty and wrote the long-range faculty staffing plan.

A scholar on Charles Dickens, Rosenberg has written numerous articles on the Victorian author and other subjects as well as two books, Mary Lee Settle's Beulah Quintet: The Price of Freedom (1991) and Little Dorrit's Shadows: Character and Contradiction in Dickens (1996). He was elected to the board of trustees of The Dickens Society in 2000.

He began his academic career as an adjunct assistant professor of humanities at The Cooper Union in New York City in 1982. He worked at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, from 1983 to 1998 as an English professor and as chair of the English Department and participated in the development of the college's strategic plan.

A native of New York City, Rosenberg received his B.A. degree from Cornell University and his M.A. and Ph.D. in English from Columbia University.

Rosenberg was selected after Macalester conducted an extensive national search. The Presidential Search Committee was chaired by Ranheim, a trustee and a 1964 Macalester alumnus. It included four other trustees, three faculty members, a student, a member of the alumni board and a staff member.

Rosenberg joins Macalester as the college seeks to build on its national reputation and momentum developed under McPherson's leadership. At the same time, according to the presidential search position paper, the new president will be asked to maintain Macalester's "historic commitments to uncompromising academic quality, global perspectives, civic and social engagement and a diverse campus community."

Macalester, founded in 1874, is a national liberal arts college with a full-time enrollment of 1,795 students.