Faculty Endowed Chairs

BY BILL HOYNES, DEAN OF THE FACULTY

Good afternoon. I have the great pleasure of announcing three new appointments to faculty endowed chairs. An endowed chair, which funds a faculty position, is created by a financial gift to the College, often in a designated field of study or stage of career. It’s typically named for either the donor or for someone being honored by the donor. Being named to an endowed chair is a significant honor because it recognizes the importance of the recipient’s scholarly or creative work and his or her contributions to the College, including valuable campus leadership.

The George Sherman Dickinson Chair in Music was established in the late 1950s to honor George Sherman Dickinson, who taught in the Music Department at Vassar from 1916 to 1953. Professor Dickinson contributed to the design of Skinner Hall, which opened in 1931, and he outfitted the building with advanced new media technology. Professor Dickinson served as Music Librarian at the College and as Chair of the Music Department for 12 years. He was a widely published scholar who taught more than 6,000 students during his Vassar career.

The Dickinson chair is awarded to a distinguished faculty member in the Music Department. The George Sherman Dickinson chair is awarded this year to Professor of Music Jon Chenette.

Professor Chenette arrived at Vassar in 2008 and served as Dean of the Faculty until 2019. During that time, he also served one semester as Acting President and one year as Interim President. He’s now a full-time faculty member in the Music Department. During his time as Dean, Professor Chenette coauthored six major grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. In addition, he has addressed national conferences on innovative pedagogical practices. Professor Chenette is an internationally recognized composer and he’s the recipient of several prestigious grants and fellowships. Congratulations, Professor Chenette.

Next is the Dante Antolini Chair in Italian. The Dante Antolini chair was established in 1966 with a gift from Julia Coburn Antolini, Vassar class of 1918, in honor of her husband, Dante Antolini, who was originally from Florence, Italy.

The endowed chair was intended to support the study of Italian language and literature at Vassar. In endowing this chair, Ms. Coburn Antolini recognized Vassar as the first women’s college in the United States to include the study of Italian language and literature in its curriculum.

The Dante Antolini Chair is awarded to a distinguished faculty member in the Italian department. This year, the recipient of the Dante Antolini Chair is Associate Professor of Italian, Simona Bondavalli. Professor Bondavalli has been a faculty member in the Italian department since 2004. She currently serves as Chair of the Italian Department, and she has served as Resident Director of the Eastern College Consortium Program in Bologna three times.

Professor Bondavalli teaches courses on Italian language and literature, as well as food studies and contemporary cinema. Her many publications on Italian cinema and television include the 2015 book Fictions of Youth, published by the University of Toronto press.

She’s currently at work on a fascinating new project that links television studies and food studies, Broadcasting the Food Nation: Gastronomy and Democracy in 1950s Italian Television. Congratulations, Professor Bondavalli.

And finally, the Mary Clark Rockefeller Assistant Professor Chair in Environmental Studies. The Mary Clark Rockefeller Chair was one of two pre-tenure chairs in environmental studies established in 2001 with a gift from Mary R. Morgan, Vassar class of 1960, in honor of her mother, Mary Clark Rockefeller.

The two Mary Clark Rockefeller Assistant Professor chairs, which rotate among junior faculty members who hold the chair during their Assistant Professor years, were created to provide sustaining support for the Environmental Studies Program at Vassar.

This year, the Mary Clark Rockefeller Chair is awarded to Zach Cofran, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and member of the Environmental Studies Program Steering Committee. Professor Cofran is a biological anthropologist who studies growth and development in humans and our close relatives, both living and extinct.

He was instrumental to the creation of the new Biology and Culture correlate sequence and he runs the human evolution and development lab and the virtual anthropology lab, both of which give students hands-on opportunities to work with advanced digital tools and anthropological research. Professor Cofran is a highly regarded scholar who’s published extensively on the evolution of the human brain. As a member of the Environmental Studies Program, Professor Cofran teaches the first-year writing seminar, A Prehistoric Perspective on Climate Change.

All three of these accomplished faculty members have distinguished themselves as teachers, scholars, and campus leaders who support students and the College itself in a variety of roles. I’m honored to recognize them here today.

While this is a virtual Convocation, so we’re not gathered together in the Chapel, I still invite the recipients to please rise in your home or office to accept our acknowledgement and appreciation. Thank you and congratulations.