Hofstra Mourns the Loss of Distinguished Professors

Shortly after the spring 2011 semester ended, the Hofstra community was shocked and saddened by the passing of two distinguished faculty members: Professor of English Dana Brand in May and Associate Professor of Psychology Vincent Brown in August. In September there was more sadness when Hofstra learned of the loss of Professor Emerita Lenore Sandel (M.S. ‘63, Ed.D. ‘70).

Dana Brand was a former chair of the English Department and taught all genres and periods of American literature. He had been on the Hofstra faculty since 1989. Dr. Brand was the author of The Spectator and the City in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (Cambridge, 1991) and numerous articles on topics in English, American, and French literature, philosophy, and film. He was also a personal essayist and the author of 2007’s Mets Fan, a collection of essays about his experiences as a baseball fan. He wrote a second book about baseball fandom in 2009 titled The Last Days of Shea. Professor Brand was particularly active in Hofstra’s Honors College, where he taught in Culture and Expression.

At the time of his passing, Dr. Brand and Dr. Richard Puerzer, associate professor and chair of the Department of Engineering, were in the midst of working with the Hofstra Cultural Center on a 2012 conference commemorating the 50th anniversary of the New York Mets. The April 26-28 conference will be dedicated to the memory of Dr. Brand. For more information on the conference, visit hofstra.edu/Mets. 

Vincent Brown had been on the Hofstra faculty since 2001, teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in cognitive psychology, research methods, and statistics. He was previously an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Arlington and a visiting assistant professor at Clarkson University and the University of Richmond. From 2008 to 2010, he served as program director in perception, action, and cognition at the National Science Foundation. Dr. Brown was co-principal investigator, with Hofstra Associate Professor of Computer Science Simona Doboli, of a National Science Foundation grant on neural network models of individual and group brainstorming.

Lenore Sandel was one of three people to receive Hofstra’s first doctoral degrees in 1970, and she was inducted into the Hofstra Honor Roll in 2010. She had joined the Hofstra faculty in 1964 after earning a master’s degree in reading in 1963. Prior to that, her first full-time position, as a clinician/ diagnostician in the Reading/Writing Learning Clinic, was created for her by the director of the Reading/Writing Learning Clinic, Dr. Miriam Schleich.

Dr. Sandel’s love of education began with student teaching, more than 65 years ago, and included years of substitute teaching in all grades and subjects, and almost 30 years at Hofstra University. She retired in 1992 after a long and illustrious career at the University, but continued to work as an adjunct professor. In 1994 she was named professor emerita, a tribute to her “long and meaningful service as an accomplished member of the faculty.” 

In 2000 Dr. Sandel made a donation of her historically valuable collection of children’s books to the Special Collections Department of the Hofstra Library. She continued to contribute to the Reading/Writing Learning Clinic for many years as a reviewer of children’s and professional books. 

Posted in: Hofstra Mourns