Iona College Announces Appointment of Dr. James Stillwaggon as Director of the Honors Program

New Rochelle, NY (November, 2011) - Dr. James Stillwaggon has been appointed to the position of director of the Honors Program for Iona College. An experienced scholar, presenter and recipient of numerous awards, grants and scholarships, Dr. Stillwaggon has been with Iona for over six years, most recently serving as an Assistant Professor of Education specializing in the philosophy of education and the role of diversity in democratic schooling and as Assistant Director of the Honors Program this past year. As Director of the Honors Program, Dr. Stillwaggon will oversee curriculum development, faculty staffing, and related programming.

"Dr. Stillwaggon brings exceptional credentials, scholarship, and teaching ability as well as a keen sense of his new role as director of the Honors Program. His expertise and deep intellect will serve Iona students well as we continue the great progress made in the Honors program," said Dr. Brian Nickerson, Interim Provost.

"I am very excited to have the opportunity to work with the committed and talented students and faculty that make up the Honors Program. The program is full of energy and ready to explore new way of re-committing the liberal arts to a greater understanding of our human condition," said Dr. Stillwaggon.

His teaching engages with broad questions of how education makes us human, drawing upon psychoanalytic theories of selfhood, desire and the imagination, and the discursive role of policy in shaping pedagogical environments and educational subjects.

Professor Stillwaggon graduated summa cum laude from the Honors Program at Loyola College in Maryland with a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy. Motivated by his experiences volunteering with adult literacy centers and incarcerated youth programs in Baltimore, he joined Teach for America and taught sixth grade in rural North Carolina. As a teacher, he started a student-run television news program and literary journal, instituted a portfolio-based reading and writing curriculum that fulfilled the state's high-stakes testing standards, and was named Teacher of the Year by his district PTA. Dr. Stillwaggon left teaching to continue his own formal education, studying aesthetics and phenomenology at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium, and later completing his PhD in Philosophy and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Dr. Stillwaggon's scholarship draws attention to the significance of desire to learning, particularly in the educated subject's relation to language. He has produced over a dozen scholarly articles and book chapters on the topic of desire and identity in schools, including "Between Private and Public: Recognition, Revolution and Political Renewal" (Educational Philosophy & Theory (43)4, 351-364); "Legal, Tender: The Deferred Romance of Pedagogical Relation in The Paper Chase" (Studies in Philosophy & Education, (30)1, 1-17); and "Inviolable Laws, Impossible to Keep: Orwell on Education, Suffering and the Loss of Childhood" (Educational Theory, (60)1, 61-80).

Founded in 1940, Iona College is a four-year private, coeducational institution of learning in the tradition of the Edmund Rice Christian Brothers and American Catholic higher education. It is a diverse community of learners and scholars dedicated to academic excellence and the values of justice, peace and service. Iona offers undergraduate degrees in liberal arts, science, and business administration, as well as Master of Arts, Master of Science and Master of Business Administration degrees and numerous advanced certificate programs.

 

For questions or more information please contact:
Dawn Insanalli
Public Relations Office
Iona College, 715 North Avenue, New Rochelle, N.Y. 10801
Office: (914) 637-2726
Fax: (914) 637-2711
dinsanalli@iona.edu