Professional headshot of a woman with grey chin-length haircut and glasses wearing a black turtleneck sweater.

Extending knowledge and cultivating leadership

Dr. Roze Hentschell, professor of English and chief academic officer for CSU System, was a keynote speaker at the Utah Presidential Leadership Fellows convening on January 30 in Ogden, Utah.

She and her collaborator and co-author, Dr. Catherine Thomas from Georgia Tech, spoke on “Centering Humanities Leadership in Higher Education.” The Fellows program’s goal is to foster talented, emerging leaders with administrative potential. With the support of The Mellon Foundation, the program emphasizes providing training in higher education leadership to rising academic leaders from the fields of arts and humanities.

“Academic leaders that hail from the arts and humanities are uniquely equipped to confront the multifaceted challenges facing our institutions of higher education today,” said Hentschell. “It is an honor to count myself among those who call upon their humanities background to lead, and also to encourage those who are moving into leadership positions.”


Faculty Bio

Dr. Hentschell has been at CSU since August 2002. Currently, she serves as the Chief Academic Officer for the Colorado State University System. Prior to that, she served as Senior Associate Dean for Academic Programs in the College of Liberal Arts. She served as the Academic Dean on the Fall 2024 voyage of Semester at Sea.

Within the English department, Dr. Hentschell specializes in early modern studies. Her first book, The Culture of Cloth in Early Modern England: Textual Constructions of a National Identity, a study of the English wool industry and trade from 1580-1615, was published by Ashgate Press. She is also the co-editor of Masculinity and the Metropolis of Vice, 1550-1650, with Amanda Bailey (Palgrave) and Essays in Memory of Richard Helgerson: Laureations, with Kathy Lavezzo (U of Delaware Press. Her second monograph, St Paul’s Cathedral Precinct in Early Modern Literature and Culture: Spatial Practices, was published in 2020 from Oxford University Press. Her most recent book, Transforming Leadership Pathways for Humanities Professionals in Higher Educations, co-edited with Catherine E. Thomas, was published by Purdue University Press in 2023. She was the English Department Thomas Mark Scholar in 2020-21.