Deborah Holdstein to Lead LAS – Eliza Nichols to Head Fine & Performing Arts
Drs. Deborah H. Holdstein and Eliza Nichols will be joining the academic administration at Columbia College Chicago this summer, announced Provost and Senior Vice President Steven Kapelke. Holdstein will take the helm as Dean of the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAS). Nichols will assume leadership as Dean of the School of Fine and Performing Arts.
“We are thrilled with the appointment of these two top ranking scholars and experienced academic administrators, both of whom have the vision and knowledge to help lead us in our next period of growth, as we work to fulfill the strategic goals of Columbia 2010,” said Kapelke. “I look forward to collaborating with them, and with Dean Doreen Bartoni of our School of Media Arts, to continue to enhance the quality and scope of our academic offerings.”
Deborah H. Holdstein, Ph.D. has served as Chair of the English Department and Professor of English at Northern Illinois University since 2005. Holdstein currently serves as editor of College Composition and Communication, the flagship journal of studies in composition and rhetoric Composition Studies and the Conference on College Composition and Communication. She also serves as an officer of that national organization. Holdstein has published and presented on a wide variety of scholarly subjects from literature and rhetoric to film studies and technology. A new volume, Judaic Perspectives on Literacy: Contexts for Rhetoric and Composition, which she co-edited with Andrea Greenbaum, is forthcoming this summer from Hampton Press.
Prior to her arrival at NIU, Holdstein taught at Governors State University, where she chaired the Graduate Council and held the position of Faculty Associate for Graduate Studies and Research, at one point also serving as Special Assistant to the Provost while chairing the university's North Central re-accreditation process.
Holdstein, who holds her doctorate in English/Comparative Literature from the University of Illinois, understands the special position of the Liberal Arts and Sciences at a college focused on Arts and Media Education.
“I'm thrilled to be joining Columbia College Chicago. I can't think of a more exciting, innovative, and creative place, one that benefits tremendously from the importance of the liberal arts and sciences to any lifelong education--but particularly an education in the arts,” says Holdstein. “In addition to the outstanding programs that already exist for majors in LAS and the ones yet to be developed, the liberal arts and sciences are crucial and integral to the well-rounded education students and parents expect from Columbia. LAS subjects and programs inspire, provide contexts, literacies, histories; teach the impact of scientific reasoning on our lives--and enhance one’s ability to think critically and to communicate analytical perspectives. In fact, a major or firm grounding in the liberal arts will make students even more marketable than they might be otherwise. The liberal arts and sciences connect studies to the real world with a depth and breadth that gives students (in the words of Mark Van Doren) the ability to know, the ability to do, and ability to know who they are. Columbia College Chicago prepares students for and in the arts--writ large. In addition to its other attributes, the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences prepares Citizens.”
Eliza Nichols, Ph.D. has been with The New School in New York City since 1998, currently serving as Vice Provost, a role in which she is responsible for all matters related to academic policy, faculty appointments and promotions and faculty development and in which she implemented the University’s first-ever faculty union agreement. Nichols also has direct oversight for the University curriculum and has played a key role in university-wide curriculum planning for The New School’s eight divisions and schools.
Prior to her appointment as Vice Provost, Nichols served as Associate Provost and Director of The New School’s Humanities program as well as serving as Associate Dean of Eugene Lang College, their liberal arts where she had direct oversight of the curriculum and academic affairs for the college. Her tenure also included experience in Graduate Student Affairs and Academic Services and a faculty appointment in Language and Literature.
Prior to joining The New School Nichols held tenure-track faculty positions in the department of Modern Languages and Literatures and the African Studies program at The College of William and Mary where she helped create interdisciplinary programs in Literary and Cultural Studies and Black Studies and taught courses in Women’s Studies and Film Studies. Nichols has also taught French at Yale University.
Nichols holds a doctorate in French from Yale University. Her major area of research and teaching focuses on Francophone African literature and cinema and their relationship to West African verbal and performing arts. As Dean, Nichols will oversee undergraduate and graduate programs in Art & Design; Arts, Entertainment and Media Management; Dance; Dance/Movement Therapy & Counseling; Fiction Writing; Music; Photography and Theater.
“I look forward to working with the chairs, faculty and staff to continue to strengthen the overall identity of the School of Fine and Performing Arts within the college as a whole,” says Nichols. “I am excited to join Columbia College because of its tradition of innovative thinking through its relationship to the urban environment and its commitment to the City of Chicago. I believe that Columbia College’s specific practices, and its orientation toward the world and its attitude to change are profoundly useful to the larger academic community as well as to its students and faculty. At Columbia the fine and performing arts are central to the education students receive. The college’s leadership in these creative disciplines provides a way of broadening the notion of education beyond traditional definitions of practice on one hand and theory on the other. Columbia College is leading the way in proving that the visual and performing arts are a necessary component of a rigorous education.”
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