November 2023 PWA Conference – “Inclusion Beyond Borders”

Dr. Scott Sprenger began his tenure as President of The American University of Rome on 1 July 2020. He came to the post after serving as Provost of The American University of Paris (AUP), Dean of the College of Arts & Humanities at Weber State University in Utah, associate dean of the College of Humanities at Brigham Young University (BYU) as well as professor of French Literature and European Studies.

President Sprenger’s administrative work as both provost and dean has covered a broad range of traditional areas, such as strategic planning, institutional budgeting, curriculum development and oversight, international programming, academic and career advising, and the creation and oversight of research centers and fundraising operations. At AUP, he secured Andrew W. Mellon institutional grants to improve first-year programs and to open a Civic Media Lab and a Center for Critical Democracy Studies. With private funding, he oversaw the founding of a Center for the Study of Genocide, Human Rights, and Conflict Prevention and a Center for Design.

While at BYU, President Sprenger was the architect of Humanities+, an innovative and comprehensive approach to bridging liberal arts and humanities study to careers in the global labor market. Humanities+ has been acclaimed in the national press and by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as one of the most innovative initiatives in the liberal arts and careers in the United States. He has also advocated for the humanities and liberal arts with the U.S. Congress via the Humanities Alliance Conference, on radio, podcasts, and YouTube, and in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Dr. Sprenger’s graduate degrees in French Studies are from Johns Hopkins University and Emory University. In 2009, he was the recipient of a Fulbright Scholar award at the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris and Brussels for work on language policy in the EU. He was also awarded an Andrew W. Mellon post-doctoral position at the Humanities Center at UCLA from 1999 to 2001.

Lindsey Rothenberg, a career U.S. Foreign Service Officer, has served as Country Fraud Prevention Coordinator for the U.S. Mission to Italy since July 2021.   In this role, she supports consular personnel across seven locations in Mission Italy in detecting and preventing passport and visa fraud.  Prior to joining the Embassy Rome Consular Section, she completed a yearlong Transatlantic Diplomatic Fellowship in the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where she worked with Italian counterparts on challenges related to counterterrorism, trafficking in persons, and organized crime.

Lindsey serves as Chair of the Policy and Planning Committee of the U.S. Embassy’s Tri-Mission Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (DEIA) Council.  In this role, she is leading a restructuring of the council to better achieve Department of State DEIA objectives.  Lindsey represented Tri-Mission Italy with her colleagues at the second annual DEIA Workshop for the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs and the Bureau of International Organization Affairs in March 2023.

Lindsey served as Visa Chief and Deputy Consular Chief in Jerusalem from 2016 to 2019, during the move of the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.  As Visa Chief in Chennai, India from 2014 to 2016, Lindsey led visa processing at the Department’s highest-volume non-immigrant work visa post.  Her other tours include Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Bogota, Colombia, and the State Department’s Office of Children’s Issues, where she assisted families impacted by international parental child abduction.