NWC promotes Lesage and Forgette to new positions

In an administrative restructuring, Northwestern College has promoted Dr. Jasper Lesage to provost and Dr. Adrienne Forgette to dean of the faculty. They will assume their new responsibilities on July 1.

Lesage has been Northwestern’s vice president for academic affairs since 2005. The newly created role of provost will bring the areas of spiritual formation and student development under his leadership, in addition to the academic program. He will supervise Dr. John Brogan, vice president for student development, who will continue to provide direct oversight of spiritual formation and student development.

Lesage will also supervise Forgette, who will join the college’s Administrative Council. Northwestern’s associate academic dean for the last two years, she previously served two years as interim associate dean of assessment and accreditation. Also reporting to the provost are individuals charged with leading study abroad efforts, Lilly Grant programs and academic support services.

“This organizational restructuring brings together the core areas of our mission—faith, learning and living—under one position,” says President Greg Christy. “By aligning those areas more closely organizationally, we believe we will have potential for better integration and, ultimately, better achievement of our mission to be a distinctively Christian liberal arts college.

“I have great confidence in Jasper and Adrienne,” says Christy. “They are proven leaders who have the essential gifts and talents to perform well in their newly expanded roles.”

Before coming to Northwestern, Lesage was an economics professor and then dean of social sciences at Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa. He has given presentations on student assessment at conferences of the American Association for Higher Education, the Council of Independent Colleges, and the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities.

Lesage earned doctoral and master’s degrees in economics from the University of Toronto and has conducted research in economic history. He received a bachelor’s degree in economics from Ontario’s Brock University.

Forgette joined Northwestern’s psychology faculty in 1995. She has served as department chairperson, faculty representative to the Board of Trustees, and coordinator of Northwestern’s self-study team during the process of reaccreditation by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association.

Forgette earned a doctorate in clinical psychology from Fuller Theological Seminary’s Graduate School of Psychology, a master’s degree in theology from Fuller, and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from California State University, Fullerton. Prior to teaching, she served as a crisis counselor/advocate for an organization dedicated to preventing family abuse and as an outpatient therapist for a counseling clinic.