Dr. Bridglall Appointed Dean of Humanities at Bergen Community College
Dr. Beatrice Bridglall
Dr. Beatrice L. Bridglall is a rarity in academia. She not only has her doctorate in education and health psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University, but also a Masters in Fine Arts (MFA) in creative writing and French Literature from Fairleigh Dickinson University; and a Masters in Public Affairs (Health Policy and Management) from the Wagner Graduate School at New York University. This unique combination of credentials has led to her recent appointment as Dean of Humanities at Bergen Community College (BCC) in New Jersey. At BCC, she is not only responsible for providing students opportunities that enable their capacity to read, write and think analytically, but also
working with faculty and staff to conceptualize transitional/bridge programs that will serve diverse and nontraditional students; integrate humanities content or texts in developmental and required courses that emphasize close reading and analytical writing; and integrate humanistic content into other disciplines within the college, including the sciences, technology, mathematics and medicine. Additionally, Dr. Bridglall is a Fulbright Specialist in higher education; most recently as a Fulbright grantee in Greece in 2015. Her research draws on multiple disciplines (including educational, social, and developmental psychology, neuroscience, anthropology, and sociology) to understand the
phenomenon of student academic development / socialization, curriculum, assessment and instruction, educational / organizational systems and conditions that impact successful learning (including parental involvement), learning and cognition, faculty expertise, and student motivation and cognition. As a scholar, Dr. Bridglall has published 5 books and over 75 research, journal and literary articles in the past decade. Her most recent book On Exploring Craft: Writers as Architects (2015; Rowman and Littlefield Publishers), takes an interdisciplinary approach to examining the art and technique of writing vis-à-vis the parallel concepts found in the architecture of antiquity and the crafting of literature that endures. For example, she considers the role of architectural elements, such as the elusive idea of balance in architecture and literature in Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and The First Sentimental Education; she investigates architectural and narrative space in Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, and several of his short stories: “Soldier’s Home” and “A Clean Well-Lighted Place”, which set the stage for comprehending important architectural considerations, such as tension, compression and pacing which she analyzes in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita and Pnin. Other challenging architectural elements include pattern and rhythm, which she explores in several of Alice Munro’s (2013 Nobel Prize in Literature)short stories: “Dulse” and “Labor Day Dinner”. She also meditates on unity and harmony in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, The Remains of the Day, and continued the discussion on order and propriety in the context of William Gass’ novella, In the Heart of the Heart of the Country. A little known fact, Dr. Bridglall has published French to English translations of two of Guy de Maupassant’s short stories (Ma Femme, Spring/Summer, 2016, and Le Bûcher, Winter/Spring 2016). Her translation of Le Bûcher was a Finalist for The Gabo Prize for Literature in Translation & Multi-Lingual Texts in honor of Gabriel García Márquez, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982.#
