Christoph Cox Named Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculty
Hampshire College has announced that its new vice president for academic affairs and dean of faculty will be Professor of Philosophy Christoph Cox, a 22-year veteran of the Hampshire faculty and a popular interdisciplinary teacher and researcher in philosophy, critical theory, art, and music. Dr. Cox brings significant leadership experience including as former chair of all of the College's major academic committees. He will report to President Ed Wingenbach and begin his term on July 1, 2020, succeeding Dr. Eva Rueschmann, who has served an eight-year term in the role, including a semester as acting president of the College.
The appointment was announced by President Wingenbach, who noted Cox’s record of leadership, such as chair of the Executive Committee of the Faculty, the Educational Policy Committee, and the College Committee for Reappointments and Promotions. This year, Cox was a founding member of the Academic Innovation Planning Group, which led the design of the College’s new curriculum, to debut for Hampshire’s 50th-anniversary class of fall 2020. Among his responsibilities as part of the president’s team, Cox will be working to advance Hampshire’s reputation as a leader in innovative education.
Cox’s appointment was the result of an internal search launched in January. The Search Committee, chaired by Professor Marlene Fried, and comprised four professors, a student, and one staff member.
“I’m committed to both the original model of the College as a laboratory for interdisciplinary and experimenting education and its current transformation into an even more innovative, accessible, and flexible institution,” Cox said. “All of us in the Hampshire community have to work together as we reinvent our curriculum, attract new students, advance diversity, equity, and accessibility, and extend the College’s reputation in higher education.”
I’m committed to both the original model of the College as a laboratory for interdisciplinary and experimenting education and its current transformation into an even more innovative, accessible, and flexible institution
Dr. Christoph Cox
In a letter to campus, President Wingenbach congratulated Cox and also thanked Eva Rueschmann for her leadership. During her tenure as vice president, Rueschmann oversaw an academic-affairs budget of close to $19 million and led a number of major initiatives: She played an important role in the College’s strategic planning and NEASC reaccreditation; in increasing the diversity of faculty; in designing processes for fair advising workload and strategic hiring; and in fostering the creation of the Ethics and the Common Good Program, the Transformative Speaking Program, the Entrepreneurship program, and the Library Knowledge Commons, which was funded by a large Mellon Foundation grant. She was also an active as a member of the Academic Innovation Planning Group.
Rueschmann recently completed terms as chair of the Five Colleges Deans Council, as Executive Committee member of the Consortium for Innovative Environments in Learning, and as president of the American Association of Australasian Literary Studies. A member of the Hampshire faculty for 26 years, Rueschmann remains a professor of cultural studies. She says she’s looking forward to teaching in the new transdisciplinary academic program and pursuing her scholarship in world cinema studies.
As vice president of academic affairs/dean of faculty, Cox will assume overall responsibility for all aspects of the academic mission, such as all educational and research activities, budget management for academic affairs, and governance. The VP is the principal liaison between the faculty and the president, and also serves as the College’s chief administrative officer in the absence of the president. The VP also staffs the Board of Trustees Committee on Academic Affairs. Cox’s responsibilities will extend to overseeing the following:
- evaluation of faculty and the reappointment process
- the hiring of new faculty
- faculty development
- academic support centers and offices
About Christoph Cox
Cox holds a PhD from the University of California Santa Cruz and a bachelor’s degree from Brown University. He joined Hampshire as an assistant professor in 1998.
He has been widely published as a philosopher, critic, and curator of visual and sonic art. Cox is the author of Sonic Flux: Sound, Art, and Metaphysics (University of Chicago Press, 2018), Vectors of the Readymade: Sound and Idea in Contemporary Art (Bloomsbury, forthcoming), and Nietzsche: Naturalism and Interpretation (University of California Press, 1999). He is a coeditor of Realism Materialism Art (Sternberg, 2015) and of Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music (Bloomsbury, 2017/Continuum, 2004), and editor-at-large for Cabinet magazine. His writing has appeared a number of journals, such as October, Artforum, the Journal of the History of Philosophy, The Wire, the Journal of Visual Culture, Organised Sound, International Studies in Philosophy, and The Review of Metaphysics.
Cox has also curated numerous exhibitions, for, among others, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, The Kitchen, and The Artist's Institute, in New York City; New Langton Arts, in San Francisco; and G Fine Art Gallery, in Washington, D.C.