From exploring the limestone caves and cliffs to exploring the blues scene in Austin, TX, Dr. Christopher Ames grew up hoping to be a baseball pitcher or a rock-n-roll guitarist. He admired baseball stars Sandy Koufax and Maury Wills, as well as musicians Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughn and Albert King.
“Neither of them quite worked out,” said Ames. “I grew up playing violin, but I became a guitarist when I rebelled as a teenager. I love baseball, but I can’t throw the ball more than like 40 mph.”
Ames, Shepherd’s newly-appointed vice president of academic affairs, was born in suburban New Jersey. He considers Austin, TX, home, though, after moving there when he was 10. Ames most recently worked at Washington College in Maryland as provost and then special assistant to the president before coming to Shepherd University.
Ames plays jazz and blues guitar but believes he is an amateur musician. He finds music very important and is glad to see that there are some live music venues in Shepherdstown. He also enjoys hiking, travel and tennis, which his father taught him as a child. Ames and his wife Lauren enjoy attending the theater together.
He met Lauren in Atlanta, Ga., through mutual friends 20 years ago. The couple just celebrated their 19-year anniversary. He believes their wedding day was the best day of his life.
Ames said, “I was married on New Year’s Eve of 1993. We had a late night wedding, so the reception included the midnight countdown.”
Laughing, Ames added that it is a very easy anniversary to remember. The two had a small wedding at St. Dunstan’s Episcopal Church in Atlanta.
“We do not have children,” said Ames. “We have cats.”
The couple adopted two strays, Hemingway and Scottie. Hemingway is a six-toed polydactyl cat, as are all of the descendants of Ernest Hemingway’s Key West cats. Three-legged Scottie is named after F. Scott Fitzgerald because Ames said he always liked Fitzgerald more than Hemingway.
Ames’ undergraduate education was in the interdisciplinary liberal arts honors program at the University of Texas at Austin, where he received a Bachelor of Arts in 1978 and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Ames received a doctorate in English literature from Stanford University in 1984.
Ames taught while he was a graduate student at Stanford. He then became a faculty member and professor of English at Agnes Scott College, a liberal arts college for women in Atlanta.
As an English professor, Ames was drawn to modern literature and film. He was moved by James Joyce and Virginia Woolf as an undergraduate in college. The addition of film happened midway in his career.
Ames was interested in the Hollywood novel, or novels that were written by established writers who ended up taking screenwriting jobs in Hollywood and then later wrote fiction about Hollywood. Such writers include F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner and Aldous Huxley, explained Ames.
Over the course of a sabbatical, Ames wrote a book called “Movies about the Movies: Hollywood Reflected” and then also began teaching film as a regular part of his classes.
“When you’re in a college class and you’re teaching a poem,” Ames said, “students have probably not spent a lot of time reading poetry. If you’re teaching a film, typical students have probably spent thousands of hours watching these visual narratives. They may not have a vocabulary for analyzing it, but they have a tremendous amount of experience in visual literacy, so to speak.”
Ames also published his dissertation on scenes of parties and celebrations in 20th century literature as “The Life of the Party: Festive Vision in Modern Fiction.” Ames believes part of what makes a community a community is how people come together to celebrate things.
Ames’ career has been in private liberal arts colleges. He served as provost and dean of the college at Washington College on the eastern shore of Maryland from 2006 to 2011. Ames equates the role of provost, or chief academic officer, to the same role as a vice president of academic affairs except a different title. He then served as special assistant to the president.
Prior to his time at Washington, Ames served as provost and senior vice president at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, Ga., from 2001 to 2006. He was a faculty professor of English at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta for fifteen years before his administrative career.
“It was a great job,” said Ames, “but I was also one of those faculty members who was very involved in faculty governance, administrative tasks, chairing a department and serving on major committees. I think it was that kind of work that got me interested in making the move to college administration, which I did in 2001.”
Ames said Shepherd University appeals to him because it is an accessible public institution that works to combine liberal arts with nationally-accredited professional schools.
Ames said, “You can come here and get a nursing degree, you can come here and get an education degree, get a social work degree, but you can also come here and get a traditional liberal arts degree like English or biology or sociology. I think that’s actually where the future of liberal arts education is, in institutions that can reach both those populations.”
Ames enjoys being in a small town where a small college can have a real effect on the community, can provide interesting projects and can get involved with cultural events. Ames also likes being in an area that is not hundreds of miles from a big city.
Ames said, “I feel Shepherdstown offers the best of both worlds in that you can easily be in D.C. or Baltimore for an event, but then you can return to a town where you run into people every day you know on the street.”
Shepherd University held a national search for the role of VPAA through a consulting firm that specializes in higher education administrative positions, taking applications from all over the country. After screening 84 applicants, the list was then cut down to eight. Preliminary interviews were held off campus in Martinsburg, which is a way that search committees can keep it confidential, explained Ames.
The committee then brought the three final candidates to campus. Ames attended one open meeting for anyone on campus to attend, another meeting for faculty, and individual meetings with people in academic affairs. He received a tour of the campus, as well.
Ames believed the committee, particularly co-chairs Dr. Dow Benedict and Dr. Laura Clayton, did a good job of answering questions, taking his wife around during the interview process, and being enthusiastic about Shepherd and its future.
Benedict, dean of the school of arts and humanities, said, “My first impression was that he was articulate, experienced and knowledgeable about the issues faced by higher education in general and Shepherd specifically. I think he will be another strong spokesperson for Shepherd, to articulate to legislators, potential donors, accreditation organizations and other bodies about the quality education that Shepherd provides.”
Dr. Diane Melby, vice president of finance and interim VPAA, advises Ames to take advantage of all the resources that Shepherd has to offer. Shepherd has an incredible community of faculty, staff and students who are invested in his success, explained Melby. She encourages him to take the time to know as many people as possible as each person has unique talents that he can access to accomplish his goals for academics at Shepherd.
After meeting Ames, Melby said, “I have found him to be thoughtful and pleasant. He has spent much of his time asking questions and listening carefully to the responses. He has a nice sense of humor and exudes a quiet confidence in his ability to fit into our community.”
Ames knows that Shepherd attracts a fair number of first generation college students. While he is not a first generation college student as both his parents had graduate degrees, he believes he can sympathize because his father was very much a first generation college student.
Ames’ grandmother was an immigrant from Hungary, who came here when she was 16, alone, through Ellis Island, and married a man with an eighth grade education who was the son of German immigrants. The couple, a Hungarian immigrant and someone with an eighth grade education, had two kids who both became English professors. Almost all of the next generation have careers in education and publishing.
“It’s a familiar story of what happens when people come and get an education,” Ames said, “or come and don’t have an education but make sure their children have it. Even though my grandparents spoke heavily-accented English, their son and daughter went to graduate school, got English degrees, taught English in schools, and then you see that play out in the next generation. I think that has something to do also with why I am an educator and why that’s meaningful to me.”
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