News Article

Gonzaga University Academic Vice President Stephen Freedman announced today that Marc Manganaro, Ph.D., has been appointed dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, effective July 16, to replace Dean Robert Prusch who returns to teaching biology at Gonzaga.

The appointment follows an extensive national search chaired by Rev. Patrick Lee, S.J., Gonzaga’s vice president for mission. For the past three years, Manganaro has served as dean of academic affairs of Douglass College, the liberal arts college for women at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Douglass is the largest public women’s college in the country .

“We are pleased to fill this important position with a person of Dr. Manganaro’s demonstrated ability, scholarship, and understanding and appreciation of the central role that the College of Arts and Sciences plays within Gonzaga University and its Core Curriculum,” Freedman said. “It is clear that Dr. Manganaro is the right person to direct the College of Arts and Sciences at this opportune time in the history of Gonzaga University.”

Gonzaga President Rev. Robert J. Spitzer, S.J., said he is pleased with the choice.

“Dr. Manganaro will bring outstanding leadership to the College of Arts and Sciences in its continuing pursuit of academic quality and teaching excellence,” Rev. Spitzer said. “His administrative experience at Rutgers, combined with his outstanding scholarship and his appreciation of Gonzaga’s Jesuit, Catholic and humanistic vision, will inspire the College of Arts and Sciences toward its highest potential.”

The College of Arts and Sciences is Gonzaga’s largest school and influences all undergraduate students who get the s ame core foundation in the arts and sciences. This foundation includes the crucial thought and expression block of critical thinking, speech and composition. This block is critical because it develops skills necessary for success in students’ undergraduate tenure and for their eventual roles in society. Students also are required to take three courses in both philosophy and religious studies. In the College, students take a wide range of core classes that make up almost one‑half of their total credits toward graduation, ranging from art to science .

Prior to his appointment at Douglass, Manganaro was, for two years, associate dean for academic affairs at University College, the college for nontraditional-age students at Rutgers-New Brunswick. He served as both vice-chair and chair of the Rutgers-New Brunswick Faculty Council, the chief faculty governance body of the university.

Manganaro came to Rutgers as an assistant professor of English in 1989, was tenured in 1992, served as the department’s director of undergraduate studies from 1994 to 1997, and was promoted to full professor of English in 2002. His research interests focus on the relation of modern literature and criticism to anthropology, folklore, and myth studies. Authors he has written about include literary modernists T. S. Eliot and James Joyce, anthropologists James Frazer and Bronislaw Malinowski, as well as myth critic Northrop Frye, mythologist Joseph Campbell, and folklorist and novelist Zora Neale Hurston. He has published numerous articles and three books to date: “ Modernist Anthropology” (Princeton University Press, 1990), “ Myth, Rhetoric, and the Voice of Authority” (Yale University Press, 1992), and “ Culture, 1922: The Emergence of a Concept” (Princeton University Press, 2002). Manganaro is a past recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities grant. He has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in 20th-century poetry, literary theory, folklore, and surveys of both American and British literature. 

From 1985 to 1989 Manganaro was an assistant professor of English at the University of Hawaii-Manoa. He received his Ph.D. in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1985, and prior to that earned a master’s degree in English from San Francisco State University.

Manganaro was born and raised in Omaha, Neb., where he attended Catholic schools, including Creighton Preparatory High School. He received a bachelor’s degree in English and creative writing from the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He is married to Nicole Lokach Manganaro, a production editor at Rutgers University Press. He has three children, Anthony, Thomas, and Rania, all of whom are now in college.

“We extend a great Gonzaga welcome to Dr. Manganaro and his family. At the same time, I, on behalf of the university administration, wish to thank Dr. Robert Prusch for his outstanding service as dean,” Freedman said. “I know that Dr. Prusch looks forward to teaching in the College (of Arts and Sciences) as a biology professor, which is near and dear to his heart.”

Prusch was appointed dean of the College of Arts and Sciences in March 2001, marking the first time in Gonzaga’s then 114-year history that a non-Jesuit held the post. Gonzaga’s Board of Members amended the university’s bylaws to allow the post to be filled by a non-Jesuit. Prusch, who has been at Gonzaga since 1981, chaired the biology department from 1981-1988, and was promoted to full professor in 1983. He filled the vacancy left by Rev. Michael McFarland, S.J., who went on to become the 31 st president of the College of the Holy Cross in New England. McFarland was appointed dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Gonzaga in fall 1996.