Getting to Know CLA Dean Bryan Zygmont

BRYAN J. ZYGMONT, PH.D., became dean of the College of Liberal Arts (CLA) on August 1. He replaced Peter Dorsey, Ph.D., who served as dean for six years. Dorsey, who came to the Mount in 1987, is taking a sabbatical before returning to the university as an English professor. Zygmont came to the Mount from Louisiana Tech University, where he served as associate dean of its college of liberal arts. Previously, he was a faculty member at Clarke University, a Catholic liberal arts institution, in Dubuque, Iowa for a decade. He recently answered a few questions.

Tell us about your vision for the College of Liberal Arts. One of the most important factors in choosing to come to the Mount was my deep admiration for our Core, a course of study that is a wonderful model for a liberal education. As such, my vision for our college is to continue to reinforce and grow its value for the students we have the honor to teach, and to endlessly advocate for the amazing faculty who do that good work. We have wonderful strengths we can build upon, and my conversations with our faculty have revealed places where we can add and grow. And I am excited about both of these challenges as we move forward.

Please share your elevator pitch on the value of the liberal arts.

For many years, it seems, the liberal arts has lost the ‘what are you going to do with that [insert liberal arts major here] degree?’ argument. However, this is an argument that is easy for us to pivot around, for the very nature of the liberal arts is that they do not prepare you for a (single!) job, they prepare you for every job. Through a course of study in the liberal arts, students learn to write with clarity and grace, they learn to critically think and analyze the world, and they learn to effectively and clearly communicate. These three skills—writing, thinking and communication—are three most desirous abilities of every potential employer. I have taught both lawyers and doctors who studied art history, and it is the very skills they learned in art history classes that have propelled them to great success in advanced degrees in unrelated fields. Those successes are because of their liberal arts training.

What is your initial impression of CLA students? Faculty? I have been sincerely dazzled and impressed with the students I have met during my short time at the Mount. They have proven to be wonderfully able and committed to learning, and these are the two things any college professor dreams of for the students they teach. I have been as impressed with the dedicated faculty of the college. We have amazing scholars and gifted teachers who daily share their passions with our whole community. And importantly, I have been inspired by their willingness to engage with the idea of what we can be, rather than relying upon what we have been. This inspires me as one of the stewards of our college.

What has been your biggest delight at Mount St. Mary's? I have a bit of a personal saying I have somewhat appropriated from one of Paul’s letters to Timothy: Fight the Good Fight. One of my greatest joys thus far has been to learn how that good fight is so much a part of the ethos of the Mount. I do not have to ask others to join me in that good fight. Instead, I have been allowed the great joy to join in with the greater community in this mission.

Your background is in art history. Tell us about the works of art you have encountered at the Mount. This campus is filled with some compelling art, and it has been wonderful to find it in unexpected places. As a scholar of American portraiture, I particularly enjoy strolling the second and third floors of Bradley Hall and looking at the images of past presidents of the Mount. I also love the copy of a Raphael Madonna and Child that is in Phillips Library. But perhaps my favorite work is what looks to be a 13th century altarpiece in the Smith Board Room (in meetings in that room I always aspire to sit across from it). I also love the vista from Founder’s Plaza.

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Follow the dean on Twitter @DrBryanZygmont