Dr. Bonnie MacDougallInterim Academic Vice President
Dr. Bonnie MacDougall, a professor in the School of English at Bergen Community College for 25 years, accepted the appointment of the Board of Trustees to interim academic vice president in September of 2011.
Dr. MacDougall immediately set goals to focus the College on the central purposes of teaching and learning. She brings a solid background to the position, including teaching every level in the American Language Program, literature, Shakespeare and composition in both regular and international classes.
Dr. MacDougall earned a master’s degree with highest honors and a doctorate from Columbia University. Her goals as academic vice president include sparking and supporting team-teaching initiatives. In addition to filming team-teaching efforts in the classroom to share with other educators, Dr. MacDougall has focused on virtual team teaching. She devoted a 2010 sabbatical to creating a course involving the use of YouTube.
The coauthor with Bergen Professor Brian Altano of “Creative Grammar Intermediate Level” (Spotlight Press, 2005), and with Bergen Professors William Jiang and Robert Freud of “Grammar Essentials 3,” Dr. MacDougall also has presented papers on literature at numerous conferences. Professors MacDougall and Jiang have twice presented papers at the national conference of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages Inc. (TESOL).
A strong proponent of research, Dr. MacDougall encourages approaches to teaching that inspire students to broaden their perspective and to think beyond the curriculum. She advocates journal writing, and believes writing should be idea-driven and not strictly defined by form.
“I believe that we have immense talent on the faculty at Bergen and that we should treat each other as experts, and spend more time talking to one another and collaborating to leverage our combined expertise for the benefit of the students."