A message from Provost Agbényiga

Dear Members of the Stonehill Community,

I am pleased to announce the appointment of Professor of History Kevin P. Spicer, C.S.C. as the second Dean of the Thomas and Donna May School of Arts & Sciences, effective July 7th. Professor Spicer will succeed former Professor and Dean Peter Ubertaccio in that role.

For the past 12 years, Fr. Spicer has served as Chair of the College’s History Department, which has 10 full-time faculty members and 50 majors. In that role, he worked to expand the focus on world history, prioritize diversity in faculty searches, and encourage the creation of courses on gender history, Native American History, Slavery and the Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement, and Antisemitism under National Socialism. He also led efforts to enhance assessment, revise the history capstone, and build stronger ties between the History Department and the College’s Career Development Center to underscore the skills that history majors bring to the job market. Similarly, he expanded collaboration between History and the College’s Archives, which increased opportunities in public history for majors and department courses taught by professional archivists.

Appointed the inaugural James J. Kenneally Distinguished Professor of History in 2009, Fr. Spicer centers his scholarly research on the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and the German state under National Socialism. He is also the author of Hitler’s Priests: Catholic Clergy and National Socialism (2008/2017) and Resisting the Third Reich: The Catholic Clergy in Hitler’s Berlin (2004) and editor of Antisemitism, Christian Ambivalence, and the Holocaust (2007). He is Chair of the Council of Centers on Jewish-Christian Relations (CCJR) and co-editor of Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations. Previously, he has served on the Holocaust Educational Foundation’s Academic Advisory Council and on the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Committee on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust. With Martina Cucchiara (Bluffton University), he edited and translated, The Evil that Surrounds Us: The WWII Memoir of Erna Becker-Kohen (2017). Currently, he is researching the relationship of Jews and Catholics in Germany from 1918 to 1945. His standing as a teacher, researcher, and writer in Holocaust Studies, is nationally recognized.

Throughout his career, Fr. Spicer has served on numerous academic committees at the College. His fellow faculty senators elected him Vice President and then President of the Faculty Senate. He has also served on the Senate’s Standards and Evaluations Committee and on the College’s Strategic Planning Committee. From 2011 to 2020, he served on the Board of Directors at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

Fr. Spicer, a Stonehill alumnus, holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. in European History from Boston College. He also has an M.Div. in Pastoral Ministry and Theology from University of St. Michael’s College, Toronto.

An advocate for student success, Fr. Spicer believes deeply in Stonehill’s educational mission and is excited about leading the May School. I am looking forward to working with him, and I know you will join me in that endeavor.

I would also like to express my appreciation to the members of the Qualifications Committee for their diligent assessment and engagement during this important process.

Sincerely,
 
DeBrenna Agbényiga, PhD, MBA, MSW
Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs