Save Antioch College

YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio – June 29, 2011 – President Mark Roosevelt has named Cezar O. Mesquita, director of admissions at The College of Wooster, as Antioch’s new dean of admissions and financial aid.

Mesquita’s appointment is the result of an intense nationwide search
that began in the spring. To date, Antioch’s admission office has been
led by alumna Kristen Pett ’90, who serves as special assistant to
the president for enrollment.

At Wooster since 2009, Mesquita developed, deployed and managed an
operating budget of $1.4 million, supervised admission counselors and
administrative staff, and coordinated elements of an integrated
marketing, recruitment and enrollment plan.

Mesquita has also served as director of admission at Doane College
(2006-2009), and held several positions at the University of Denver
(2000-2006), including director of diversity enrollment, interim
director of admission, and assistant director of admission.

He was the interim executive director and an assistant director of the
Latin American Educational Foundation (1998-2000), a 60-year-old
Denver-based nonprofit that provides Hispanics in Colorado with access
to higher education.

Mesquita earned a B.A. in Spanish, with minors in French,
international affairs and Portuguese, at the University of Nebraska.
He earned an M.A. in Latin American studies at the University of
Alabama.

About Antioch College

A private, independent nonprofit liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio, Antioch College will offer a four-year, undergraduate residential experience to a new class of students beginning in the fall of 2011. The College curriculum puts equal emphasis on rigorous liberal arts learning, work (cooperative education), and community engagement. Students will complete individualized majors based on one of 11 concentrations, a language minor, and six full-time work experiences. The institution, originally founded in 1850, is now completely independent of Antioch University, the multi-campus system it founded.

MEDIA CONTACT:
Gariot P. Louima ?
Chief Communications Officer
Office: 937-319-6131
Mobile: 937-581-8201
glouima@antiochcollege.org

YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio – June 29, 2011 – President Mark Roosevelt has named Cezar O. Mesquita, director of admissions at The College of Wooster, as Antioch’s new dean of admissions and financial aid.

Mesquita’s appointment is the result of an intense nationwide search
that began in the spring. To date, Antioch’s admission office has been
led by alumna Kristen Pett ’90, who serves as special assistant to
the president for enrollment.

At Wooster since 2009, Mesquita developed, deployed and managed an
operating budget of $1.4 million, supervised admission counselors and
administrative staff, and coordinated elements of an integrated
marketing, recruitment and enrollment plan.

Mesquita has also served as director of admission at Doane College
(2006-2009), and held several positions at the University of Denver
(2000-2006), including director of diversity enrollment, interim
director of admission, and assistant director of admission.

He was the interim executive director and an assistant director of the
Latin American Educational Foundation (1998-2000), a 60-year-old
Denver-based nonprofit that provides Hispanics in Colorado with access
to higher education.

Mesquita earned a B.A. in Spanish, with minors in French,
international affairs and Portuguese, at the University of Nebraska.
He earned an M.A. in Latin American studies at the University of
Alabama.

About Antioch College

A private, independent nonprofit liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio, Antioch College will offer a four-year, undergraduate residential experience to a new class of students beginning in the fall of 2011. The College curriculum puts equal emphasis on rigorous liberal arts learning, work (cooperative education), and community engagement. Students will complete individualized majors based on one of 11 concentrations, a language minor, and six full-time work experiences. The institution, originally founded in 1850, is now completely independent of Antioch University, the multi-campus system it founded.

MEDIA CONTACT:
Gariot P. Louima ?
Chief Communications Officer
Office: 937-319-6131
Mobile: 937-581-8201
glouima@antiochcollege.org

YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio – June 27, 2011 – Based on the recommendation of a search committee, President Mark Roosevelt hired Geneva M. Gano, an expert in comparative American literatures and cultures, as an assistant professor of literature. Gano joins the faculty on July 18.

“Geneva is a great addition to our faculty. She brings a solid educational background and a lot of energy and enthusiasm for teaching,” said Hassan Rahmanian, vice president for academic affairs. “I particularly appreciate her pedagogical style – opening space for critical debate – and her interdisciplinary orientation.”

Gano is the fifth tenure-track professor hired to teach at the College. Earlier this year, Roosevelt hired professors of anthropology, chemistry, philosophy, and 3-D art based on the recommendation of search committees, which are comprised of former faculty, emeriti faculty, and alumni and friends of the college who are subject-matter experts or serve as members of faculty at other liberal arts colleges.

Most recently a visiting assistant professor of American studies and Latino studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, Gano focuses her teaching and research in the areas of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature and culture; Chicana/o literature and film; the races, places and spaces of literary form; regionalism, nationalism, and cosmopolitanism; and GLBTQ and gender studies.

At Indiana University, she taught courses in twentieth-century U.S., Mexican, and Chicano literature, film, and culture. Prior to that appointment, she developed courses in hemispheric American literary studies at UCLA, where she was a lecturer in the Department of English, and at Stanford University, where she was a postdoctoral teaching fellow.

Gano is currently expanding and revising her dissertation (filed in 2007) for publication as Un-American Places: Geography, Race, and Nationalism in Modern Literature. Drawing from social network analysis, postcolonial studies, and narrative theory, she shows how the writing of and through particular places – including the wild Pacific coastline of Robinson Jeffers' narrative poems, Lynn Riggs' haunted Indian mounds, Willa Cather's mystical Blue Mesa, Zora Neale Hurston's migrant camps on the Florida muck, and the contested borderlands of Americo Paredes – acquires anti-nationalist meaning.

As a collection, Gano asserts, these readings prompt a reassessment of the teaching and study of literature that reflects a world – and field of study – that has come to conceive of itself as post-national and multilingual. By thinking through and beyond local communities, she argues that literature need not be taught and studied through a narrow, nationally circumscribed lens.

Gano's peer-reviewed publications include essays in Modern Fiction Studies and American Transcendental Quarterly, among others.

She earned a B.A. in English, with departmental honors, at Stanford University, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Candidates for faculty positions are assessed on their subject matter expertise; ability to teach their subjects; ability to interact with students, faculty colleagues and community members; ability to collaborate effectively; knowledge of and comfort with the three C's of classroom, co-op and community; and their interpersonal style and ability to engage in effective discussion. All finalists for faculty positions visit the campus in Yellow Springs for a day of interviews and meetings with college personnel.

About Antioch College

A private, independent nonprofit liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio, Antioch College will offer a four-year, undergraduate residential experience to a new class of students beginning in the fall of 2011. The College curriculum puts equal emphasis on rigorous liberal arts learning, work (cooperative education), and community engagement. Students will complete individualized majors based on one of 11 concentrations, a language minor, and six full-time work experiences. The institution, originally founded in 1850, is now completely independent of Antioch University, the multi-campus system it founded.

MEDIA CONTACT:
Gariot P. Louima ?
Chief Communications Officer
Office: 937-319-6131
Mobile: 937-581-8201
glouima@antiochcollege.org

YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio – June 27, 2011 – Based on the recommendation of a search committee, President Mark Roosevelt hired Geneva M. Gano, an expert in comparative American literatures and cultures, as an assistant professor of literature. Gano joins the faculty on July 18.

“Geneva is a great addition to our faculty. She brings a solid educational background and a lot of energy and enthusiasm for teaching,” said Hassan Rahmanian, vice president for academic affairs. “I particularly appreciate her pedagogical style – opening space for critical debate – and her interdisciplinary orientation.”

Gano is the fifth tenure-track professor hired to teach at the College. Earlier this year, Roosevelt hired professors of anthropology, chemistry, philosophy, and 3-D art based on the recommendation of search committees, which are comprised of former faculty, emeriti faculty, and alumni and friends of the college who are subject-matter experts or serve as members of faculty at other liberal arts colleges.

Most recently a visiting assistant professor of American studies and Latino studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, Gano focuses her teaching and research in the areas of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature and culture; Chicana/o literature and film; the races, places and spaces of literary form; regionalism, nationalism, and cosmopolitanism; and GLBTQ and gender studies.

At Indiana University, she taught courses in twentieth-century U.S., Mexican, and Chicano literature, film, and culture. Prior to that appointment, she developed courses in hemispheric American literary studies at UCLA, where she was a lecturer in the Department of English, and at Stanford University, where she was a postdoctoral teaching fellow.

Gano is currently expanding and revising her dissertation (filed in 2007) for publication as Un-American Places: Geography, Race, and Nationalism in Modern Literature. Drawing from social network analysis, postcolonial studies, and narrative theory, she shows how the writing of and through particular places – including the wild Pacific coastline of Robinson Jeffers' narrative poems, Lynn Riggs' haunted Indian mounds, Willa Cather's mystical Blue Mesa, Zora Neale Hurston's migrant camps on the Florida muck, and the contested borderlands of Americo Paredes – acquires anti-nationalist meaning.

As a collection, Gano asserts, these readings prompt a reassessment of the teaching and study of literature that reflects a world – and field of study – that has come to conceive of itself as post-national and multilingual. By thinking through and beyond local communities, she argues that literature need not be taught and studied through a narrow, nationally circumscribed lens.

Gano's peer-reviewed publications include essays in Modern Fiction Studies and American Transcendental Quarterly, among others.

She earned a B.A. in English, with departmental honors, at Stanford University, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Candidates for faculty positions are assessed on their subject matter expertise; ability to teach their subjects; ability to interact with students, faculty colleagues and community members; ability to collaborate effectively; knowledge of and comfort with the three C's of classroom, co-op and community; and their interpersonal style and ability to engage in effective discussion. All finalists for faculty positions visit the campus in Yellow Springs for a day of interviews and meetings with college personnel.

About Antioch College

A private, independent nonprofit liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio, Antioch College will offer a four-year, undergraduate residential experience to a new class of students beginning in the fall of 2011. The College curriculum puts equal emphasis on rigorous liberal arts learning, work (cooperative education), and community engagement. Students will complete individualized majors based on one of 11 concentrations, a language minor, and six full-time work experiences. The institution, originally founded in 1850, is now completely independent of Antioch University, the multi-campus system it founded.

MEDIA CONTACT:
Gariot P. Louima ?
Chief Communications Officer
Office: 937-319-6131
Mobile: 937-581-8201
glouima@antiochcollege.org

UPDATE – June 29, 2011 – Louise Smith will serve as dean of community life at Antioch College.

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YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio – June 22, 2011 – Antioch College President Mark Roosevelt has hired Louise Smith, former Antioch professor of theater and a licensed clinical therapist, as the director of community life. She begins her full-time role in early July.

Reporting to the president, Smith will serve on the College’s senior leadership team and lead the coordination of student life initiatives, student orientation, student leadership, outreach, residential life, and efforts to see students through to graduation. The student life program she directs will refine the Antioch College tradition of community governance, its commitment to diversity, and its unique program of local, national, and global cooperative education.

“This is a critical, central job for the College as we move forward. We found the right person with the right set of skills to do this work. I’m so pleased to be welcoming Louise back to Antioch College,” Roosevelt said.

For the past two and a half years, Smith has worked as a mental health counselor in community mental health settings. Her training encompassed working in substance addiction at Women’s Recovery Center, as well as at Wilmington College, where she started up an on-campus counseling center. After working for a time at the Dayton-based Assertive Community Treatment, she took her most recent post as a therapist for Wellspring and the Rocking Horse Adult Mental Clinic.

After earning a degree in theater from Antioch College in 1977, Smith moved to New York City, where she worked as a professional actor, touring nationally and internationally with Julie Taymor, Ping Chong and Company, Talking Band, Meredith Monk, and Illusion Theater, among others. She won an Obie Award in 2003 for her work in A Painted Snake in a Painted Chair and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award in 1988 for Best Female Lead in the film Working Girls.

Smith joined the Antioch faculty in 1994 as chair of the theater department, a position she held until the college closed in 2008. From 2000-2004, she also chaired the arts department. She served as the associate dean of faculty from 2005-2006. As associate dean, she implemented new curriculum, designed advising structures, chaired the Orientation and Commencement committees, and served as a liaison between students and the administration.

In addition to her degree from Antioch College, Smith holds an M.A. in playwriting from Antioch University and an M.S.Ed. in community counseling, with licensure, from the University of Dayton.

About Antioch College

A private, independent nonprofit liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio, Antioch College will offer a four-year, undergraduate residential experience to a new class of students beginning in the fall of 2011. The College curriculum puts equal emphasis on rigorous liberal arts learning, work (cooperative education), and community engagement. Students will complete individualized majors based on one of 11 concentrations, a language minor, and six full-time work experiences. The institution, originally founded in 1850, is now completely independent of Antioch University, the multi-campus system it founded.

MEDIA CONTACT:
Gariot P. Louima ?
Chief Communications Officer
Office: 937-319-6131
Mobile: 937-581-8201
glouima@antiochcollege.org