Randolph-Macon College issued the following announcement on Oct. 29
Members of the Randolph-Macon community gathered on Friday, October 29 at 4 p.m. in the McGraw-Page Library for an installation ceremony honoring two College professorships. Marisa R. Cull, Professor of English, was named the Dr. Jean Renner Short Professor in the Liberal Arts, and Jen Cadwallader, Professor of English, was named the A. G. Ingram Professor in English.
President Lindgren welcomed the faculty, staff, members of the Board of Trustees, and friends and family of Dr. Cull and Dr. Cadwallader in attendance.
“Of all the gifts a college receives, very few make a more profound or permanent impact than the gift of an endowed professorship,” President Lindgren said. “It enables Randolph-Macon to perpetuate our tradition of excellence for future generations, and it allows us to attract and retain the very best faculty working in higher education today.”
"We gather today to honor two of Randolph-Macon’s finest exemplars of liberal education—of questioning, skepticism, and devotion—and of the broadmindedness, virtue, wisdom, and generosity we seek to cultivate in our students and ourselves," said Dr. Alisa Rosenthal, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs and Professor of Political Science, before conferring the professorships to Dr. Cull and Dr. Cadwallader.
English Professor Marisa R. Cull earned her B.A. from Capital University and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the Ohio State University. Dr. Cull joined the Randolph-Macon faculty in the fall of 2008.
A recognized scholar of early modern literature, Dr. Cull specializes in Shakespeare and his contemporaries, British national identity, and Welsh and Irish literature and history. In 2011, she was awarded the Art Conway Award for Enthusiasm in Teaching and Learning, and in 2017, she earned the Thomas Branch Award for Excellence in Teaching, both of which honor faculty excellence in the classroom.
Dr. Cull is the author of several articles and book chapters as well as Shakespeare’s Princes of Wales (Oxford University Press, 2014), which was nominated for first book prizes by the Modern Language Association, the Renaissance Society of America, and Shakespeare’s Globe.
“Students extol her for challenging and rigorous courses, deep expertise and passion for the literature she teaches, and high standards and expectations matched by unfailing support,” Dr. Rosenthal said. “They cite her restrained guidance and thoughtful mentorship, her capacity to see more in them than they may initially see in themselves, and her ability to then help them to see it as well. As one student wrote, ‘Professor Cull was one of the first people whom I respected in the position of a teacher to so earnestly respect me back. And that might seem trivial, but it meant the world to me.’”
Dr. Cull drew from her own college experiences to illustrate the dramatic effect a liberal arts education can have on not just a student’s school years, but throughout their lifetime. She described her alma mater’s general education curriculum as foundational to the way she lives and thinks today.
“It is a joy to so regularly teach students who are taking my class as part of their general education curriculum; it is a privilege to ask myself, each day that I plan a lesson, how I might engage students in a way that might make them think about the lives they are living right now, or the lives they might be living in their futures as nurses or doctors or lawyers or accountants or teachers...It was the most consequential decision of my young life to attend a liberal arts institution, and if there is an achievement of my career I feel fully comfortable celebrating, it is that I have kept my belief in this type of education central to the way I do my work here at Randolph-Macon.”
The Jean Renner Short Professorship in the Liberal Arts
The Jean Renner Short Professorship in the Liberal Arts, established in 2020 by the generosity of the Short Trust, honors the loyal, dedicated support of Dr. Short to Randolph-Macon College.
Dr. Short worked in the U.S. Bureau of the Budget and the Executive Office of the President under Presidents Truman and Eisenhower. She later served four terms on the Board of the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, the Jamestown-Yorktown Education Foundation, and four terms as president of the First Thanksgiving in America Festival. Dr. Short and her husband, Dr. Shelton H. Short III, created two prominent scholarships at Randolph-Macon; in 2000, the College bestowed Honorary Doctorates of Humane Letters on both of them, celebrating their commitment to forests, wildlife, historic preservation, humanitarianism, and higher education.
English Professor Jen Cadwallader earned her B.A. from Alfred University and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She joined the Randolph-Macon faculty in the fall of 2009.
Dr. Cadwallader’s scholarship has focused on Victorian ghost stories and the Spiritualist Movement, and her work on spirit photography was featured in JSTOR Daily. More recent work examines capitalism’s influence on childhood agency. In the classroom, she has guided students through Charles Dickens’ London using virtual reality, and has used multiple mediums—from novels to video games—to introduce students to narrative technologies.
Dr. Cadwallader is the author of Spirits and Spirituality in Victorian Fiction (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) and co-editor of Teaching Victorian Literature in the 21st Century (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). She has received recognition for her work from the Northeast Modern Language Association and the Children’s Literature Association.
“All of what Jen does is both authentic and intentional,” Dr. Rosenthal said. “She understands the difference it makes to students when their faculty see them as whole persons; she understands the difference it makes to faculty when their colleagues support their scholarly endeavors; she understands the difference that her outstandingly scrumptious chocolate-chip cookies make to transforming an academic department into an intellectual and social home and a long committee meeting into…well, a long committee meeting with amazing treats. One of her colleagues describes her as a ‘quiet powerhouse,’ and I think that’s exactly right.”
During her speech, Dr. Cadwallader alluded to several paragons of English fantasy literature—from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass to C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park—as she extolled the power of novels to convey the richness of the human experience and revel in what unites us. She noted that Victorians believed novels were dangerous, so great was their hold on the reader’s imagination.
“No one who has read Frankenstein mistakes the creature for a monster," Dr. Cadwallader explained. “And today, empathy for our fellow beings sometimes seems in short supply. We are all too apt to see monsters when we see differences between us. Less and less do we ask, ‘What’s your story?’ and learn to empathize. And that’s what English does. Every time we pick up a novel, we are asking, ‘What’s your story?’ and practicing our ability to empathize. And so huzzah for this dangerous occupation, novel reading, which helps us ‘take interest in, to feel with, grieve with, rejoice with' others, fictional and otherwise."
The A. G. Ingram Professorship in English
The A. G. Ingram Professorship in English was established by Alexis Gordon Ingram '61 and recognizes a senior member of the English department for exemplary teaching of a traditional English curriculum as an essential, vital constituent of the liberal arts.
Ingram attended Randolph-Macon for three years. He received his B.A. in English from the University of North Carolina (UNC) in 1962, later attending UNC’s law school. Following three years in the Navy, Ingram worked as a stockbroker for 32 years with Wheat & Company, retiring as a Senior Vice-President Investment Officer. He later established Ingram Construction Company with his son, Stephen, in North Carolina. Mr. Ingram was a member of the President’s Society and Heritage Society and remained connected with Randolph-Macon until his death in 2015.
The A. G. Ingram Professorship was previously held by Ritchie D. Watson (1999-2008), Theodore F. Sheckels, Jr. (2008-2011), and Thomas G. Peyser (2011-2021).
Original source can be found here.
Alerts Sign-up