Reginetta Haboucha
Reginetta Haboucha is vice president for Academic Affairs at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT). As chief academic officer of the college, she works collaboratively with academic deans and directors to advance the academic mission of the College and oversee all academic programs and initiatives within FIT’s schools of Art and Design, Business and Technology, Continuing and Professional Studies, Graduate Studies, and Liberal Arts. She also oversees assessment activities in Academic Affairs.
Dr. Haboucha joined FIT in 2000 as dean of the School Liberal Arts. She went on to serve as acting dean of the School of Graduate Studies and acting associate vice president for Academic Affairs before assuming her current post in 2006. Before joining FIT, she was dean of humanities at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, NY. She also served as an ACE Fellow at Hunter College (CUNY) and as special assistant to the acting president of the College. A classroom professor for many years, she began her academic career teaching at Queens College (CUNY) and Yeshiva University. In 1973 she joined Lehman College (CUNY), where she rose to the rank of full professor of Spanish and chaired the department of romance languages before joining Marist College in 1995.
Dr. Haboucha is an honorary inductee of Pi Sigma Alpha, Omicron Rho Chapter, and the recipient of an honorary research fellowship from Harvard University as well as several grants and fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Radcliffe Institute, and the CUNY Research Foundation. A prolific author, translator, reviewer, and lecturer, Dr. Haboucha has published two books, including, Types and Motifs of the Judeo-Spanish Folktales (Garland Publishing, 1992), a National Jewish Book Award finalist. Her numerous scholarly articles include those on topics such as “Judeo-Spanish Tales Reflecting Forced Conversion” (2005), “The Lazy Wife, A Rare Jewish Version of an International Folktale Type” (2001), “Everything to Gold: The Midas Legend in the Sephardic Context,” and “A Current Update on the Judeo-Spanish Folktale” (1993).
Dr. Haboucha is a past board president of the Eleanor Roosevelt Center at Val-Kill (ERVK) and a founding member of the New York City Friends of ERVK. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Spanish at Queens College, CUNY and, as an undergraduate, also studied at the University of Lisbon in Portugal, the University of Granada in Spain, and Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She earned her Ph.D. and Master of Arts in Spanish at The Johns Hopkins University and studied higher education management at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education (IEM) and as part of the American Council on Education Fellows Program.