Preceded by Daniel Weiss Name Alison Byerly Profession Professor | Children Laramie
Ryan Spouse(s) Stephen Jensen | |
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Alma mater Wellesley College
University of Pennsylvania Website Office of the President Books Realism, representation, and the arts in nineteenth-century literature Education Wellesley College, University of Pennsylvania | ||
Alison byerly why lafayette college
Alison R. Byerly is the President of Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. The announcement was made on January 16, 2013. She assumed the position on July 1, 2013 and became the 17th President of Lafayette College and the first female President in the college's history.
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Early life
Byerly was born in Glenside, Pennsylvania in Montgomery County in 1961. She earned a bachelor of arts degree with honors in English at Wellesley College in 1983, a master of arts in English at the University of Pennsylvania in 1984, and a doctorate in English from Penn in 1989 where she was awarded a University Fellowship, the Dean’s Fellowship, Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching, and Mellon Dissertation Fellowship. At Wellesley, she was awarded Wellesley’s Jacqueline Award in English Composition and Mary C. Lyons Prize in Writing.
Career
Byerly served as provost and executive Vice President at Middlebury College in Vermont from 2007 to 2012. She had been at Middlebury College since 1989. She has been a visiting scholar at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and Oxford University.
Her area of speciality is the intersection of literature and other media with research focus on Victorian Literature, culture and media; digital humanities; technology and the liberal arts. In the announcement from Lafayette, they stated that "she is one of the nation’s most prominent thought leaders on the role of technology in higher education today;" Dr. Byerly commented “At a time when many liberal arts colleges are looking for ways to extend their reach further into the world of technology and to connect the traditional liberal arts disciplines with opportunities to pursue more project-based, hands-on modes of inquiry, Lafayette is well positioned to lead in these initiatives,” She is a leading voice on emerging forms of digital scholarship, the changing role of the humanities in the digital age, the importance of curricular innovation, and MOOCs (massively open online courses).
On January 16, 2013, it was announced that Byerly would become the 17th President of Lafayette College. She assumed the position on July 1, 2013 and in doing so, became the first female President in the college's history.
Personal life
Byerly is married to Stephen Jensen, a medical editor. Their daughter, Laramie, is a graduate student at Texas A&M University, and their son, Ryan, is in his first year at Dickinson College. She likes to sing, play the flute, and ski.
Published works
She has written Realism, Representation, and the Arts in Nineteenth-Century Literature (Cambridge, 1998), and Are We There Yet? Virtual Travel and Victorian Realism (U of Michigan, 2012).