A Call to Serve As associate dean of advising, Spanish professor Gabriel Barreneche is living out his commitment to service learning and mentorship. Throughout Gabriel Barreneche’s life, he’s answered a call to serve others. “I think it goes back to the way I was brought up,” he explains. “That sense of humanity and moral guidance has always been there.” For Barreneche, this lifelong commitment to community translated into the pursuit of a career in education. He grew up in southern New Jersey, the son of Cuban immigrants—a childhood that, he says, instilled a set of clear values in him early on—
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values that, along with his all-time favorite movie—pointed him in a clear direction. “I watched Dead Poets Society all the time,” says Barreneche, “and I wanted to be like that teacher and really inspire young people.” He never envisioned himself as an administrator, though. So it’s with a touch of surprise in his voice that Barreneche speaks about the passion he now feels for his current role as associate dean of
advising. In this position, which has most recently involved serving as the academic representative in the planning process for the newly opened Kathleen W. Rollins Hall—the College’s new center for applied liberal arts learning—Barreneche says he’s able to help spread the core values of Rollins like never before. “There is just something about being able to have a broader reach,” he says, “touching more than maybe the 45 students I would
