For many years, revenue from this endowment was combined with that of the Boldt Chair in the Humanities to meet the threshold for an endowed chair. Over time, the funds in both endowments have grown to the point that the Boldt endowment is sufficient to support the Boldt chair, and the NEH endowment is similarly sufficient to support a separate chair. The Board of Regents awarded the chair for the first time in 2023.
Current Chair: Maggie Broner, Professor of Romance Languages
Maggie Broner earned her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. A native of Argentina raised in Venezuela and Canada, she developed an interest in languages and language variation at an early age. Broner specializes in Hispanic linguistics (sociolinguistics) and second language acquisition and pedagogy. Currently, she is Co-Director for the Center for Innovation in the Liberal Arts.
Broner’s teaching and research agenda is interdisciplinary and collaborative and is one of the reasons she enjoys working at St. Olaf. She is affiliated with Race and Ethnic Studies, Applied Linguistic Studies, and Environmental Studies. Recent interdisciplinary courses center around Spanish in the United States; language, power, and ideology; and race and gender in Latin America. Recent interdisciplinary published work includes “Developing Sustainability Literacy: Environment as a Catalyst for Change in Third-Semester Spanish,” (with Gwendolyn Barnes Karol), and “Coda” in Foreign Language Teaching and the Environment: Theory, Curricula, Institutional Structures (with Charlotte Melin.)
Her current research with Prof. Gwendolyn Barnes-Karol focuses on how world/second language learners process full length literary and non-literary texts in the undergraduate setting. They are working on a manuscript tentatively titled “Cultivating a Culture of Reading (Literature) in an Undergraduate Spanish Program: Lessons Learned from Twenty Years of Action Research.” This research examines students’ narratives of language development that occur while reading novels in classes that are not primarily literature courses.
Broner is an advocate for the humanities and world language education through her work with the Modern Languages Association in her role as President-Elect of the MLA-ALD (Association of Language Departments) Executive Committee.
Broner co-directed the Mellon Grant “To Include is To Excel” with Prof. Emeritus Mary Carlson during the first year of the initiative and served as a grant Fellow on year two of the grant. Broner continues her dedication to DEIB and received the 2023 Equity and Inclusion Leadership and Service Award.