Lorenson, Jiménez Assume New Roles
June 29, 2018 — Georgetown College is happy to announce major staffing changes within the Dean’s Office for the upcoming 2018-2019 academic year.
Senior Associate Dean Sue Lorenson will take on a new role as Vice Dean for Undergraduate Education, and Assistant Dean Javier Jiménez will move from his current role advising first-years and sophomores into a new role advising juniors and seniors.
Georgetown College will also welcome new academic counselors to its advising team as we say goodbye to Assistant Dean Joe Napolitano, who is moving overseas.
SUE LORENSON
Sue Lorenson has called the Hilltop home for the past 21 years, serving in various roles at Georgetown College. A linguist with a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona, Lorenson has served on the leadership team of the College, managed the junior and senior advising team, and herself served as an academic advisor to language, linguistics and psychology majors. She was instrumental in the development of the Faculty of Languages & Linguistics Hager Scholars Program and teaches introductory linguistics as part of the program.
“Language is everywhere. Linguistics is everywhere. It’s what makes us uniquely human,” Lorenson said. “In using language, we talk about things that are imagined. We can lie, conspire, dream out loud, hash things over, indicate that we’re part of a group. It’s how we develop relationships. Language is at the heart of it all.”
In her new role, Lorenson will be Dean Christopher S. Celenza’s lead in shaping the College’s evolving undergraduate experience, with an eye toward integrating teaching and research at the undergraduate level. She believes the liberal arts core of the College’s undergraduate curriculum serves students for their entire professional lives.
“Liberal arts education is the best pre-professional education out there,” Lorenson said. “It doesn’t prepare you for one specific profession, but imparts skills applicable for many professions — including, crucially, ones that don’t exist yet. Our students will be prepared for careers you and I can’t even conceive of yet as a result of their Georgetown College education.”
JAVIER JIMÉNEZ
Javier Jiménez has been a member of the Georgetown community since 2015, when he joined the College as an assistant dean advising first-year and sophomore students.
“For the last three years, I have loved advising first and second-year students. Much of that work involved teaching students how to be students at Georgetown and about the distinctly diverse liberal arts curriculum in the College,” Jiménez said. “Now, I get to help students delve deeper into their chosen disciplines and complete their dreams of becoming Georgetown College graduates.”
In his new role, Jiménez will be the primary academic advisor for juniors and seniors majoring in comparative literature, history, psychology, and languages. The new portfolio is a natural fit for Jiménez, a former Spanish professor who holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of California at Berkeley and has a passion for languages and the humanities.
“Those are my people — my academic and intellectual tribe,” Jiménez said. “I feel more at home now than ever before!”
A DEPARTURE AND AN ARRIVAL
This summer, the College also said goodbye to Assistant Dean Joe Napolitano, who has relocated to Hungary with his wife and two daughters as his wife assumes a new post with the Air Force. The College is in the process of hiring an academic counselor to advise junior and senior government majors.
In July, Sarah Lim (C’16) will join the College as an academic counselor to first-years and sophomores. Lim, who majored in studio art at Georgetown, recently completed a M.Ed. at the University of Maryland, with a specialization in student affairs and international education policy.
“I am delighted that Sue Lorenson, for whom I have great admiration, will be taking on this new leadership role. The other changes, including a move for Javier Jimenez and a chance to welcome Sarah Lim, a College alumna, back into the Dean’s office, are truly meaningful,” Dean Celenza said. “Advising the whole person during the course of an undergraduate education represents something at the very core of our mission. Accordingly, our team is growing and changing to make sure we are the best we can be.”
— Patrick Curran