At the end of this academic year, three longtime members of the Connecticut College faculty will retire, leaving behind more than 100 years of experience at the College. Professors Marylynn Fallon, Janet Gezari and William Rose leave behind a legacy of leadership and innovation in their respective fields.
Marylynn Fallon Senior Lecturer, Biology
Marylynn Fallon received her B.A. from Cardinal Cushing College and her M.A. from the University of Northern Colorado. She joined Connecticut College in 1979, serving as both a senior lecturer and lab instructor in biology. She also serves as a faculty adviser for first-year students and biology majors.
Fallon works with students interested in pursuing graduate studies and careers in the medical field as pre-health adviser and chair of the pre-health advisory committee. She coordinates the Pre-Health Club and organizes the internship and shadow program at Lawrence + Memorial Hospital’s emergency room, as well as the Medical Board of Practitioners Experience program. She’s an active member of both the local Association of Advisors for the Health Professions and the Northeast Association of Advisors for the Health Professions.
In 2007, through these professional organizations, Fallon worked with directors of admission from renowned medical schools, learning about the updated MCAT testing program and alternative medical careers. Her familiarity with these admission directors benefited numerous Connecticut College students interested in furthering their education in medical programs.
Fallon is a member of the Hewlett Teaching Fellows Program, designed to investigate the intellectual foundations of teaching and learning at the college level. She was born and raised in New London and taught high school biology in Newton, Massachusetts, prior to joining the College.
Janet Gezari
Janet Gezari Lucretia L. Allyn Professor of English
Janet Gezari received her B.A. from Cornell University, and her M. Phil. and Ph.D. from Yale University. She joined Connecticut College in 1970 and served as acting director of the Gender and Women’s Studies program. She twice co-directed the College’s Study Away Teach Away program in Mysore, India, where she taught English colonial novels and Anglophone Indian postcolonial novels.
Gezari’s writing focuses on the novels of the Brontés and the poetry of Emily Bronté. She is the editor of “Emily Bronté: The Complete Poems” and the author of “Charlotte Bronté and Defensive Conduct: The Author and the Body at Risk,” which was selected as an Outstanding Academic Book by Choice in 1993 and awarded the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize by the British Academy. She has authored or edited several other texts about the Brontés, including an annotated edition of “Wuthering Heights” in 2012.
Gezari also teaches courses on Victorian and modern novels, contemporary fiction in English and the work of musician Bob Dylan. She is currently working on a book on late style in the work of Vladimir Nabokov, J.M. Coetzee, Bob Dylan and Philip Roth.
In 2010, Gezari was a Berlin Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. In 1997, she was given the Lucy Marsh Haskell ’19 Chair and received the College’s Nancy Batson Nisbet Rash Research Scholar Award, presented annually to a member of the faculty for oustanding scholarly or artistic accomplishments.
William Rose
William Rose Professor of Government and International Relations
William Rose received his B.A. and B.S. from the University of Washington and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He joined Connecticut College in 1983, serving twice as chair of the Government Department and founding the international relations major. Rose has served on various committees, including the Educational Planning Committee, the Academic and Administrative Procedures Committee and the Study Away Committee.
Rose’s courses focus on international relations, terrorism and counterterrorism, insurgency and counter-insurgency, U.S. foreign policy, and U.N. peacekeeping. He has published numerous articles—many with College students—that have appeared in books and journals on terrorism, foreign policy and ethnic conflict. Interested in effective teaching methods, he co-authored “Teaching About the Future of U.S.-Soviet Relations” and “The Professor’s Dream: Getting Students to Talk and Read Intelligently.”
Rose is a member of the International Studies Association and the Sudan Studies Association. He formerly served as a consultant to Brown University’s Choices for the 21 Century Education Project, was a board member of the Southeast Connecticut Committee on Foreign Relations and was an adjunct research fellow at Harvard’s Center for Science and International Affairs.
In 2012, Rose received the John S. King Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching, presented annually to a teacher-scholar with high standards of teaching excellence and concern for students.
