Meet the Deans
Dr. Rena Fraden
Dean, College of the Pacific,
Professor of English
WPC 110, 209.946.2023, 
Email
Dean Fraden holds a B.A., summa cum laude, and Ph.D. in English from Yale University. She was a faculty member in the Department of English at Pomona College for 23 years, where she also served as associate dean from 2003 to 2006 and as the chair of the English department from 1999 to 2003. She joined Trinity College in Hartford, Conn, in 2006, where she served as the dean of the faculty and vice president for academic affairs and the G. Keith Funston Professor of English and American Studies.
A literary historian whose work focuses on cultural institutions, Fraden's scholarly work ranges from the 1930s WPA arts projects to contemporary theater arts. She is the author of "Imagining Medea: Rhodessa Jones and Theater for Incarcerated Women" and "Blueprints for a Black Federal Theater."
Fraden studied in India in 1998 on a Fulbright Fellowship and was a Fellow at the Center for the Humanities at Wesleyan University in 1990. She has also received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
Dean Fraden's CV
Orientation Speech 2013
Dr. Gregg Jongeward
Senior Associate Dean, College of the Pacific,
Associate Professor of Biological Sciences
WPC 111 (Academic Affairs Office), 209.946.2141, Email
Dean Jongeward, graduated Summa Cum Laude with a B.S. in Genetics and Cell Biology from the University of Minnesota. He holds a Ph.D. in Developmental Genetics from the California Institute of Technology and has completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco in the area of cancer research, funded by the American Cancer Society.
He has been at Pacific since 1996. Before his appointment as Senior Associate Dean, he served as Co-Chair of the Biological Sciences department. He and his lab at COP develop DNA fingerprinting tools for studies of evolutionary biology and ecology.
Prior to joining Pacific, Dr. Jongeward did extensive research in the area of cancer and developmental biology, looking at how newly formed cells communicate with their neighbors to determine their fates and functions. The genes that control these decisions are the very same genes that, when mutated, push a cell towards forming a tumor. He has been published in Science, Molecular Cell Biology, Development, Genes and Development, Genetics, and Nucleic Acids Research. He has also presented at international, national, and regional meetings.
Dr. Gesine Gerhard
Associate Dean and Director of General Education, College of the Pacific,
Associate Professor, History
WPC 110, 209.946.2146, Email
Dean Gerhard received her B.A. in History at Free University of Berlin. She also holds an M.A. in History, Political Science and Italian Studies from the Technical University of Berlin and a Ph.D. in Modern German History from the University of Iowa.
She has taught classes in European history at Pacific since 1999 and has been the recipient of more than a dozen awards and fellowships. Her main area of study is in the Nazi period with a particular interest in how food policies expedited the murderous campaigns of the Nazis during World War II. She has published numerous articles in both English and German on the topic and is currently working on a political biography of Herbert Backe, one of the two men in charge of agriculture and food during the war.
Dr. Marcia Hernandez
Assistant Dean, College of the Pacific,
Associate Professor of Sociology
WPC 117, 209.946.2142, Email
Dean Hernandez earned a B.A. in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University at Albany, State University of New York.
Before her appointment as the Assistant Dean in January 2012, she was an Assistant and then Associate Professor in the Sociology Department at Pacific teaching courses on Theories of Culture and Society, Sex and Gender, and Prejudice and Racism. She is a recipient of Pacific's Women of Distinction Award (2011) and the Martin Luther King Jr. Peace and Justice Award (2009). She has presented research on African American sororities, Black women in popular culture and service learning pedagogy at national and regional academic conferences. Her research has appeared in the Journal of African American Studies, Social Indicators Research, Oracle: The Research Journal of the Association of Fraternity/Sorority Advisors and the Journal for Civic Commitment.
The responsibilities of our administration and faculty are outlined on the organizational chart here. Contact information for many of the individuals listed is included in the relevant sections of our website.