Joseph R. Marbach became Georgian Court University’s ninth president on July 1, 2015. As the president, Marbach is charged with leading the strategic vision and growth of the university. He is Georgian Court’s first male and first lay president. He earned a Ph.D. in Political Science from Temple University in 1993. His areas of expertise include federalism and intergovernmental relations, state and local government, and New Jersey politics. An award-winning radio analyst, he is often asked to share his expertise in state and local government, particularly in New Jersey politics. In 2010, he was named provost and vice president for academic affairs at La Salle University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. There, Marbach, who also held a post as a professor of political science, established the English Language Institute, the Office of Professional and Corporate Education, and the Institute for Lasallian Education and Engaged Pedagogy. He expanded the university’s presence in online education, graduate studies, international education and recruitment, signing cooperative agreements with local colleges and international universities.
He is the former dean for the College of Arts and Sciences at Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey, where he also was a professor and former chair of the Department of Political Science. At Seton Hall, Marbach served as acting chair for the Department of Africana Studies and as co-founder and director of the Center for Community Research and Engagement. During his years at Seton Hall, he was a frequent media contributor and subject-matter expert for television, radio, newspaper, and magazine outlets. Prior to his appointment at Seton Hall, he served as the assistant director of the Center for the Study of Federalism at Temple University from 1990 to 1994.
Marbach is a past president of the New Jersey Political Science Association and has served on the council of the American Political Science Association’s Section on Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations. He was a fellow with the Pennsylvania Policy Forum, and he has been an active participant in the Global Dialogue on Federalism, sponsored by the Forum of Federations and International Association of Centers for Federal Studies. Marbach was a fellow with the Rutgers Ethics Initiative, a project of the Prudential Business Ethics Center at Rutgers Business School, Newark. He has taught in many faculty seminars sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Fulbright Summer Institute. Along with several book chapters, Marbach’s work appears in numerous journals and encyclopedias. He was the book review editor for Publius: The Journal of Federalism from 1998 to 2005 and a columnist for www.politickernj.com (2008-2010).
