Susan R. McDaniel

Professor of Humanities and Composition
B.A. Smith College
M.A. Middlebury College
Ph.D. Yale University
406.657.1019
Tyler Hall Room 212
mcdanies@rocky.edu

Biography

Her family's love of Italy and its language led Susan McDaniel from an oil boom town in New Mexico to a doctorate from Yale University in the study of medieval and Renaissance Italian literature and art. Then, life called in a different direction, and she returned to her native West, married a Western veterinarian and managed the veterinary clinic she and her late husband owned in Montana in the 1980s. Raising sheep and topping the market with her Columbia-Suffolk lambs rounded out her experience, but literature, the humanities and the fine arts were still a major part of her life. In Miles City, Mont., she directed a non-profit art museum and continued to teach literature, poetry and the humanities. In 1994, she returned to academe full time and since then has served Rocky Mountain College as director of grants, provost and academic vice president, director of the language institute for study abroad, professor of Italian literature and language, director of the honors program. Currently, she is professor of humanities and composition and directs the college's federal Title III grant for student retention and the honors program. She remains committed to students and their achievement, whether in understanding great thinkers and writers, in acquiring language skills or in writing fluently in English or Italian. She credits a liberal arts education for her ability to "re-invent" herself over the years, continue a conversation with the great minds of the ages, return to academe in a student-oriented college like Rocky Mountain College and engage with today's students.