Crossing International Borders and Departmental Boundaries: Davidson College Profs Named to New Leadership Roles

It was 1986, and the mail one morning brought exciting news. She had been selected for a Rotary Club international exchange program — in Santiago.  

Here’s how Mangan, now the Mary Reynolds Babcock Professor of History and Latin American Studies at Davidson College, recounts the moment to her digital-era students: 

“I walked across the living room to the globe — do you know what that is? — and spun it [to Chile] and thought, ‘Wow! That is really far down there.’”

Across her academic career, she also has lived in Spain, as well as Mexico, Bolivia and Peru. She has visited eight other Latin American countries, including with groups of Davidson students. 

“You’re not a diplomat,” Mangan said, “but you’re always a representative of the United States.”

Depending on the political context when she lived in or visited Latin America, the reception could be sharply different. She lived in Bolivia when the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration was eradicating coca fields and generating bitterness. She visited Cuba in 2016, days before President Obama arrived, and was greeted by Cubans brimming with excitement and hopefulness for the future. 

These anecdotes and experiences led to and strengthened Mangan’s career and continue to inform how she teaches. At Davidson, she has been serving on an interim basis as the John and Ruth McGee Director of the Dean Rusk International Studies Program and recently was named as the permanent director. She leads a program, named for a Davidson alum who was John F. Kennedy’s secretary of state, that brings international programming to campus and awards grants for international study and exploration to students, opening up the kinds of career-shaping, global experiences that Mangan lived. 

“I’m working with students on what a younger version of me did,” she said. “That’s incredibly rewarding and brings things full circle.” 

Students, International Bankers and the POTUS

While in a different role at Davidson 12 years ago Mangan searched for someone to teach a course on Brazil as an adjunct professor. She phoned Britta Crandall, another Latin America expert with teaching experience and who had served as an analyst for the White House Office of Management and Budget, the international watchdog group Freedom House, and Bank One, now JP Morgan Chase. She would interpret what’s happening in Latin American countries and how events affected financial markets or civil rights and political risks.

Crandall’s doctoral degree is in international relations, a blend of economics and political science, and her jobs have overlapped those two disciplines and others, tying in fiscal policy, trade, migration and a host of other subject areas. She continues to provide analysis for S&P Global, the largest of the nation’s three major credit-rating agencies and publisher of extensive financial research. 

“I’ve never NOT done interdisciplinary work,” Crandall said, recalling how that debut class at Davidson on Brazil examined the country’s politics and economy. 

Crandall, now an associate professor of the practice in political science, has been named as the new director of the college’s Center for Interdisciplinary Studies. That office helps students and faculty explore topics that cross traditional departmental boundaries. Students can complete majors that are not regularly offered by existing departments or programs. Sometimes those initiatives grow into full-fledged academic departments, such as public health, Latin American studies and educational studies — all born out of the CIS. 

“It’s understanding one discipline through the incorporation of another,” Crandall said. “I’m inherently curious about and interested in political economy issues, whether the audience for that analysis is students, governments, or corporations, and I have really enjoyed bringing students into that world.” 

Living, Learning and Sharing 

Both Mangan and Crandall bring to their new roles the expertise with which they teach and which they continue to build through their own learning through experiences outside of campus. 

“Jane Mangan is a historian of Latin America. She’s lived and studied all over the hemisphere,” said Shelley Rigger, vice president for academic affairs and dean of faculty. “She’s taken students to Peru several times, and she’s mentored many students through Dean Rusk projects over the years. Professor Mangan understands what our students need and how the Dean Rusk program can help faculty enhance global learning.” 

Mangan has enlisted the Dean Rusk Center’s support many times over the years to bring in a guest speaker with international expertise. She makes a point of inviting Davidson alums so current students can see possible career paths. Her relationships and operational knowledge after 21 years at Davidson enable her to quickly and effectively work with Davidson teams tied to Dean Rusk’s operations, such as the Matthews Center for Career Development or the fundraising staff. And Davidson’s close community and small size mean that she continues to work closely with students, including teaching and mentoring advisees. 

“I’m an historian,” Mangan said, “and history, in a way, reflects a similar set of issues playing out differently, depending on the context.” 

Mexican immigrants in the late 19th century, for example, generated the same kind of headlines as Latin American migrants today. Students learn from experience in other countries that the information they receive at home often is incomplete, Mangan said. They are preparing themselves to respond better to events in the future. 

Crossing Lanes Is Good

Rigger described Crandall as “a social science utility player.” She teaches in Political Science, Latin American Studies and Economics. Her policy-related scholarship helps her move across and integrate different areas of learning — an ideal background for the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies. 

“Professor Crandall knows what it means to bring together different toolkits to approach a particular problem or question,” Rigger said. “Her teaching interests in Latin American Studies and Politics, Philosophy, and Economics require that she communicate what interdisciplinary work really is to colleagues and students.”

Crandall’s guiding question is: How do you make decisions? 

“Better solutions to the thorniest problems in the world,” she said, “come from approaching them from different angles.” 

Davidson offers students the rare blend of real word experiences — overseas studies, research, internships or community engagement — and classroom learning across disciplines that extends students’ learning beyond what is typically associated with a liberal arts college, Crandall said. 

“Where is there a need? Where is there an interest?,” she said. “Davidson is able to respond to it.”