WEST LIBERTY, W.Va., Aug. 10, 2017 — West Liberty University has named Dr. Gerard NeCastro its new Dean of the College of Liberal Arts.
NeCastro joined the campus on July 1, 2017 and now supervises the departments of Humanities, Social Work and Behavioral Sciences and Criminal Justice, which offers undergraduate programs and WLU’s new graduate degree program in criminology.
“I am particularly pleased to be Liberal Arts Dean since I find Liberal Arts faculty to be the hardest working faculty around. I’m also pleased to say that I have found that West Liberty is the friendliest campus that I’ve ever been a part of,” NeCastro said, who is originally from Erie, Pa.
“I hope to promote the idea that the Liberal Arts is not only about the traditional values of liberating the mind. In the 21st century, it has a practical side that is proven to help students find a career and succeed in that career. Employees are finding that the communications and critical thinking skills that are so much a part of the Liberal Arts, are a big part of career success,” he said.
The College of Liberal Arts also includes 29 faculty members and staff.
“Everyone is already working so hard and it shows,” said NeCastro, who has an office in Main Hall and a second one in the Elbin Library. “The scholarly nature of the work being done by some of our highly qualified faculty is amazing.”
NeCastro previously spent 22 years in the University of Maine system, serving as professor of English and Humanities at University of Maine at Machias. He also was on the graduate faculty at the University of Maine.
He served as the chair of the division of Arts and Letters for five years and served as faculty president for two years.
He is the founder of Medica, the society for the Study of Healing in the Middle Ages, and the secretary of the Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society. NeCastro also edited the international literary journal, The Binnacle, for 17 years.
NeCastro earned his doctoral degree from the University of Wisconsin (Madison), his master’s degree from the University of California at Riverside, and his bachelor’s degree from Mercyhurst College, Erie, where he double majored in both English and Business.
NeCastro resides in Bethany, W.Va., with his wife Vicki, who is a music educator. They are the parents of one adult daughter, Maria.
West Liberty University is West Virginia’s oldest institution of higher education and offers nearly 70 undergraduate majors and 30 programs. Graduate programs include the Master of Arts in Education, the Master of Science in Physician Assistant Studies, the Master of Professional Studies, the Master of Science in Criminology and the online MBA degrees. For more information, please call 1.866.WESTLIB.