Portrait of a Presidency

Patterns in My Life as President of The College of New Jersey

As public opinion began to sour on higher education, R. Barbara Gitenstein became president of The College of New Jersey (TCNJ), today one of the most competitive and successful public undergraduate institutions in the Northeast, second only to Princeton in completed graduate degrees in the State of New Jersey. During her nineteen-year tenure as president, she confronted multiple crises, including 9-11, student deaths, controversial speakers, and political interference. By partnering with other agencies and working with a board of trustees, she successfully navigated the complex expectations of a higher education leader—but not without a few missteps along the way. Told with a self-deprecating humor that helped lead to her success, Portrait of a Presidency: Patterns in My Life as President of The College of New Jersey offers insights on leadership that will resonate across industries.

Experience is the Angled Road

Memoir of an Academic

While Experience is the Angled Road: Memoir of an Academic is about leadership, it is not a handbook on how to be a leader. R. Barbara Gitenstein’s narrative captures the shock and the humor she faced when confronting the obstacles of being the only “whatever” in the room (woman, Jew, southerner, liberal).

Her parents moved from New York City to a small town in Alabama, where Gitenstein was born and raised. While Southern etiquette prevented most citizens from overtly anti-Semitic slurs, she knew from a young age that she just did not fit. When she left for boarding school in the 8the grade, she discovered that it was more than being Jewish and a Yankee that made her an oddity. She was an intellectual; she loved classical music. She survived painful loss and life changing challenges. In a chapter focused on her mother’s impact on her life, Gitenstein writes of the final months of her mother’s fight with Alzheimer’s