Dr. Janet Dudley-Eshbach
Dudley-Eshbach in 2016
8th President of Salisbury University
In office July 1, 2000 – June 30, 2018
Preceded by	William C. Merwin
Succeeded by	Charles A. Wight
18th President of Fairmont State College
In office 1996–2000
Preceded by	Robert J. Dillman
Succeeded by	Daniel J. Bradley
Personal details
Born	Janet Elizabeth Dudley
Nationality	American
Academic background
Alma mater	Indiana University El Colegio de México
Thesis	El proyecto de Macedonio Fernández para una primera novela buena[1] (1986)
Academic work
Discipline	Hispanic literature
Institutions	Goucher College Allegheny College State University of New York at Potsdam Fairmont State College Salisbury University

Janet Dudley-Eshbach, Ph.D. became president of Salisbury University in Salisbury, Maryland in June 2000. She is the eighth president and the first woman to hold that office in the seventy-five year history of the university. In 2005, she was named one of Maryland's Top 100 Women in 2005 by the Maryland Daily Record.^[2] She retired in June 2018.^[3]

Education

Dudley-Eshbach has an undergraduate degree in Spanish and Latin American studies from Indiana University, where she was a Phi Beta Kappa scholar, and holds a doctorate in Hispanic literature from El Colegio de México.

Professional career

Before joining Salisbury, Dudley-Eshbach served four years as President of Fairmont State College in West Virginia, where she was also the first woman to hold the office of President at any public four-year college in the state's history. She spent eight years at the State University of New York at Potsdam, serving the roles of Professor of Spanish and Latin American studies, Chair of the Department of Modern Languages, Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Dean of the School of Liberal Arts, before being appointed Provost in 1993. She was a full-time faculty member for ten years at Goucher College and Allegheny College.^[2] Her professional expertise is in international education, student recruitment, institutional marketing, fundraising, and shared governance, among other areas.

Personal life

Dudley-Eshbach enjoys writing poetry and essays, reading, playing the guitar, travel, biking, and beachcombing. A native of Baltimore, she is married to Joseph Eshbach.^[2]

Facebook controversy

In 2007 Dudley-Eshbach posted several pictures on her Facebook profile, among which was a picture of Dudley-Eshbach pointing a stick toward her daughter and a Hispanic man. The caption underneath the picture read that she had to "beat off the Mexicans because they were constantly flirting with my daughter."^[5][6]

After being contacted by the media, which had been alerted by upset students, Dudley-Eshbach removed the photos and issued the following statement: "Many of us are learning about the positives and negatives of public networking sites such as Facebook. I regret that some of these family vacation photos, with captions that were only intended to be humorous, were included on Facebook. I did not intend for these photos to end up in the public domain, and I am grateful that this was brought to my attention. I sincerely apologize for any offense anyone may have taken."^[5]

In an interview with the Washington Post Dudley-Eshbach said, "Somebody said that the fact that I was apparently going to hit a Mexican, that that was racism. That's not the way it was intended. Frankly, I think the media locally here is trying to make a sensational story about something that was, on our part, innocent. The truth is, I am a very fun-loving person. What we were doing was having fun. There was nothing immoral, there was nothing illegal, there was nothing illicit."^[6]

References