Jane Dammen McAuliffe

Jane Dammen McAuliffe is the eighth president of Bryn Mawr College, beginning her tenure in July 2008. Before that, she served as Dean of Georgetown College at Georgetown University from 1999 to 2008. At Georgetown, she was also a tenured Professor in the Department of History and the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies. Dr. McAuliffe held previous appointments at Emory University as professor and associate dean and at the University of Toronto as Chair of the Department for the Study of Religion and Professor of Islamic Studies in the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations. She received her BA in Philosophy and Classics from Trinity College, Washington, D.C. and her MA in religious studies and PhD in Islamic studies from the University of Toronto.

Academic leadership

As Dean of Georgetown College, Dr. McAuliffe focused particular attention on faculty recruitment and development. She worked closely with department chairs to enhance the diversity of the College faculty, to increase its sponsored research and to develop initiatives that foster more effective teaching. Her promotion of curricular renewal benefited departments across the College and generated the creation of new undergraduate majors and minors as well as several new doctoral and masters' programs. Convinced that the initial undergraduate months are critically important, Dr. McAuliffe instituted an intensive advising system for all first-year students in the College and recently launched an innovative series of first-year seminars. Leading the College's successful fundraising in the University's campaign allowed Dr. McAuliffe to open a new performing arts center in 2005, to complete several facilities upgrading projects, to increase the number of endowed faculty positions in the College from 10 to 40 and to build the funding levels for numerous College programs. Her development work also secured foundational gifts for a new Science Center which is now the College's top capital project. In recent years, Dr. McAuliffe collaborated with faculty and administrative colleagues on a number of major university initiatives. These include the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, the Archbishop of Canterbury's Building Bridges Seminar, several projects in support of the Afghan recovery and reconstruction and the creation of Georgetown's School of Foreign Service in Qatar. She was frequently invited to lecture, to both academic and non-academic audiences, on topics related to her research and her role as an educator, as well as on issues of religious diversity and pluralism.

Research and publication

Dr. McAuliffe is an internationally known scholar of Islamic studies. Her numerous publications have focused primarily on the Qur'an and its interpretation, on early Islamic history and on the multiple relations between Islam and Christianity. Titles include Qur'anic Christians: An Analysis of Classical and Modern Exegesis (Cambridge, 1991), Abbasid Authority Affirmed: The Early Years of al-Mansur (SUNY, 1995), With Reverence for the Word: Medieval Scriptural Exegesis in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (Oxford, 2003), and The Cambridge Companion to the Qur'an (Cambridge, 2006). She recently completed the six-volume Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an (Brill, 2001-2006), the first such reference work in Western languages. Dr. McAuliffe is co-editor of a book series published by Brill Publishers and a member of several editorial boards. In 2004, she served as president of the American Academy of Religion, the elected leadership position for this 10,000 member professional organization. Professor McAuliffe's work has been supported by prestigious fellowships, including those from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and Guggenheim Foundation.

Professional and personal

Dr. McAuliffe has long been active in various forms and forums of Muslim-Christian dialogue, on both the national and international levels, and served for ten years on the Vatican's Commission for Religious Relations with Muslims. She has also been on the boards of the American Academy of Religion, the Association of Theological Schools, and the Center for Applied Research on the Apostolate. In 2005 she was appointed to the Board of Trustees of Trinity University in Washington, DC. Dr. McAuliffe is married to Dr. Dennis McAuliffe, who is currently an Italian professor at Bryn Mawr College and is a former scholar of medieval Italian literature at Georgetown University. They are the parents of four children.

External links

• Biography of Jane McAuliffe, President of Bryn Mawr