Sarah Adams is the Executive Director of General Education and an Assistant Professor of General Studies at Berea College, where she leads the College’s effort to provide students a transformative liberal arts education grounded in inquiry, reflection, and real-world engagement.

In practice, her work spans the full range of that mission: from refining a student learning outcome in collaboration with the Committee on General Education to supporting teachers as they bring those outcomes to life in the classroom; from advancing institutional priorities like experiential learning to overseeing Convocations, Berea’s signature lecture and performance program that connects every student on campus to world-class thinkers, artists, and public figures.

Before stepping into this role, Sarah spent six years at Berea as a writing program administrator, faculty developer, teacher, and summer bridge director; before that, she earned her Ph.D. in English from Penn State, where she studied rhetoric and wrote about the tv show Parks and Recreation, the theorist Kenneth Burke, and the “applause debates” of the early 20th century classical music world.

Sarah’s varied background and current portfolio shape how she thinks about the many promises of general education. She believes the best general education classrooms are where fun, free-range curiosity meets big questions and wicked problems. As she sees it, her job—and her joy—is making that happen.