The Dallas Islamic Center hosted Dr. Marjorie Hass, the president of Austin College on May 7th, 2010. Dr. Marjorie Hass`s talk was titled: “The Liberal Arts Educational Model: Supporting Religious Diversity”.
Dr. Marjorie Hass became the 15th president of Austin College on July 1, 2009. The provost at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, from 2004 to 2009, Dr. Hass oversaw all fiscal and personnel aspects of the academic program. Before assuming the provost position in 2004, she served for nearly a year as interim dean of the college for faculty and vice president for academic affairs. She also was director of the Center for Ethics at Muhlenberg for three years, responsible for programming and integration of the center’s program into the curriculum.
As chief academic officer at Muhlenberg, she had a significant role in the strategic planning process. She initiated a program that created new funding and faculty development opportunities for teaching methods that bridge the gap between theory and practice. That program resulted in enhanced quantity, depth, and quality of faculty-student research collaborations, study abroad experiences, and service learning opportunities.
At Muhlenberg, Dr. Hass also set out to centralize diversity both as an issue of access and as a curricular foundation of the liberal arts. She had a decisive role in creation of the college’s first multicultural center, procedures to recruit and retain minority faculty, and acquirement of a Mellon Foundation grant that would augment diversity and internationalization of the curriculum.
Dr. Hass has participated in several administrative development programs, including the American Council for Education National Leadership Forum, Advancing Women’s Leadership; Harvard’s Institute for Educational Management; the Annapolis Group Provosts Meeting; the Academic Chairpersons Conference; and the CASE Development for Dean’s conference.
During her career, Dr. Hass has become an experienced spokesperson for the importance of liberal arts education for individuals, communities, and for global citizenship. Involved in higher education issues beyond her own campus, Dr. Hass served on the board of directors of the American Conference of Academic Deans and as a member of the Blue Ribbon Panel for the Great Campus Workplace Project of The Chronicle for Higher Education.
Dr. Hass began her career at Muhlenberg in 1993 as assistant professor of philosophy and was promoted to associate professor in 1998 and to professor in 2006. Her teaching experience provides an insider’s awareness of the synthetic relationship of teaching and creative scholarship with a college’s mission. As an administrator, she created strong systems of support and recognition for faculty scholarship, artistic endeavors, and teaching, while maintaining effective relationships with faculty committees and the college’s Board of Trustees.
Dr. Hass earned a bachelor’s degree, with highest distinction, in philosophy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She continued studies there to complete a master’s degree and Ph.D. in philosophy. Her dissertation was “Interpreting Negation: A Semantic Theory of Negation for Standard and Non-Standard Logics.”
Specializing in philosophy of logic and philosophy of language, she has received several honors for teaching and in support of research. She has published many papers within her academic specialties and frequently presented her work at professional meetings.
President Hass is married to Dr. Lawrence Hass, who serves Austin College as professor of humanities. The couple has two children, Cameron, a student at Muhlenberg College, and Jessica, a student at Sherman High School.
