New MALS Director Named

Dan Coleman has been named the new director of the College’s Master’s Program in Liberal Studies, replacing David Glaser, who has taken a teaching position in Thailand.

“It is a pleasure to welcome Dan Coleman to Skidmore,” said Dean of Special Programs Don McCormack. “His experience, energy, and creativity will be of great value to the MALS program as it marks its 10th anniversary, particulary as Dan considers how best to recruit and serve the needs of students in the years ahead.”

Coleman came to Skidmore from Bennington College, where he had worked since 1998 in several capacities, including as director of special projects in the Office of Communications, where his prime responsibility was the admissions process, materials, and marketing strategies; and as co-founder and associate director of the Center for Creative Teaching, where he helped launch an undergraduate and graduate-level teacher education program that was integrated into Bennington’s liberal arts curriculum. He also taught both undergraduate and graduate-level courses in education, literature, and philosophy at Bennington.

He earlier gained experience in teaching at several colleges and schools, including Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., Stuyvesant High School in New York City; St. Paul’s School in Concord, N.H.; and Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass.

Coleman was drawn to Skidmore by the chance to work with non-traditional adult students. “The kind of students that come to the master's program are people in the middle of their lives -- in the middle of careers, and kids, and all sorts of complex necessities. For these students, there’s nothing automatic about going back to school, nothing inevitable, nothing easy. It’s a real sacrifice. The difficulty of it makes their education matter in a way that school doesn’t always matter. These students aren’t just continuing their educations; they’re choosing them. They’re hungry for what Skidmore has to offer,” he explained.

In Coleman’s view, the attributes that make MALS students so interesting require creativity in recruiting new students to the program. “Our prospective students don’t all come from the same box,” he said. “That’s wonderful once we’ve got them here, but it makes getting them here a challenge. Since they aren’t all coming to us from the same kind of location or occupation, there's no easy way to target them.” As result, his major short-term goal is to help the MALS program improve its marketing image by improving its academic substance, “to live up to its dream of itself.” He added, “We need to communicate what’s most exciting about this program to people inside the Skidmore community -- faculty, undergraduates, and alumni -- and to people on the outside. We need to find those students who can step up to this kind of educational challenge.”

A 1989 graduate of the University of Chicago, where he obtained an A.B. degree in interdisciplinary humanities and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, Coleman earned master’s and doctoral degrees in English language and literature at Cornell University.

While at Cornell he received fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and a Sage Graduate Fellowship.

Long influenced by teaching -- both parents and a brother are educators -- Coleman says “I've always loved the thrill of working with students in a way that really turns their heads inside out.” However, his own teaching will take a back seat while Coleman turns his attention to administrative duties and the upcoming 10th anniversary of the MALS program. The year ahead will feature a reunion for graduates, faculty, and current students, along with a major revision of the program’s web site and publications.

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