Emily McDermott came to UMass Boston in 1974, with a BA from Bryn Mawr College and a PhD in Classics from Yale. In her time at the University, she has taught over thirty-five different undergraduate and graduate courses, including Latin and Greek language and literature classes, classical civilization classes, Core classes, First-Year Seminars, Honors Seminars, and (most recently) online courses. As the first among her colleagues to immerse herself in oral-Latin conventicula, she initiated the department’s present seminal focus on application of second-language acquisition theory to the teaching of Latin. Her publications center on joint specializations in Greek tragedy, with particular focus on Euripides, and Late Republican and Augustan Latin poetry, especially Catullus, Horace, and Virgil. Most recently, she has turned her scholarly attention to Reception Studies, publishing numerous articles on classical education through the centuries and on classical elements in authors as diverse as Alexandre Dumas, Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Hardy, Louis de Bernières, Ethan Canin, and Charles Frazier. Administratively, she has spent ten of her more than forty years on campus as Chair of the Classics Department; five in the 1980’s as Assistant Chancellor under Robert A. Corrigan; seven first as Associate Dean, then as Interim Dean of Graduate Studies; three as Interim Dean of the College of Liberal Arts; and three as Associate Provost and Dean of the Faculty. She assumed the role of Interim Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs in August of 2017.