When the university held this year’s opening day breakfast for faculty and staff, President Dana Mohler-Faria began his remarks by introducing the new provost and vice president for academic affairs, Dr. Barbara Feldman. She “is very much what I would call ‘Bridgewater material,’” the president said. “She was one of us even before she arrived here… I knew when I first interviewed her for the position that she is the kind of person who understands us, understands our students and faculty, and understands fully our mission.”
Dr. Feldman, a native of New York who grew up in New Jersey, earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Delaware and earned a doctorate in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Howard London, a veteran professor, dean and her predecessor, retired this summer after more than three decades at BSU.
As impressed with Dr. Mohler-Faria was with her qualifications, Dr. Feldman was equally impressed by Bridgewater’s commitment to two of her own major interests – undergraduate research and study abroad opportunities.
“In terms of undergraduate research, I was fortunate myself to have had such an opportunity at the University of Delaware,” she said. “I had entered college as a sociology major planning on eventually attending law school, but when I was a junior I started doing research with a faculty member and I went to New York City to present a paper at a sociological society meeting. It changed my life. I remember calling my parents from my dormitory and telling them I was not going to go to law school but instead would go to graduate school to study sociology.”
Later, in her graduate studies at Penn, she had a study abroad experience that, she says, “had a far-reaching impact on me both personally and professionally.”
Her focus in graduate school was on the sociology of disasters. Dr. Feldman traveled around America and to other countries, including long-term stays in Italy and the former Yugoslavia, to study either the immediate close impact of disasters or the long-term recovery phases.
“The experience I had overseas convinced me absolutely of the immense value that study abroad represents,” she says.
Prior to coming to Bridgewater, Dr. Feldman was dean of the William J. Maxwell College of Arts and Sciences at New Jersey City University, where she was responsible for 25 departments and programs, 165 full-time faculty and approximately 50 professional and clerical staff.
Before that, she was the associate dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Montclair State, which followed a tour as the as associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Seton Hall University.
Now settled in at Bridgewater and looking ahead, she says that, long-term she would like to help encourage even more of BSU’s students to take advantage the campus’s programs and location to prepare for successful careers.
“This area is so rich in learning opportunities in Boston and New York – and we have such varied opportunities for overseas study – that students can more easily integrate what they learn in the classroom to what they experience outside of the institution,” she said. “My goal is that someday every Bridgewater student will have had at least one off-campus experience and most will have had several.”
Arriving just as BSU is about to celebrate the 175th anniversary of its founding has special meaning for her, she says.
“This is truly an exciting time for the university, which has such a distinguished history and reputation,” Dr. Feldman said. “I look forward with the greatest enthusiasm to working closely with all the members of our community to further advance Bridgewater’s support of learning excellence in everything we do.” (Story by David K. Wilson, ’71; outer photo by student Nicholas Allende; University News)