Trenton NJ - At its December meeting, New Jersey Historical Commission elected two new officers, Michael Fernandez of Lambertville and Maxine N. Lurie of Piscataway as chair and vice-chair, respectively, for two year terms that began on January 1, 2009.

Michael Fernandez currently serves as the Executive Assistant for External Relations to the President at New Jersey City University in Jersey City, where he manages and coordinates the University's external relations effort with state and federal government agencies as well as with higher educational, business, labor and non-for-profit community organizations.  Prior to his tenure at NJCU, Mr. Fernandez spent a dozen years advocating the policy interests of NJ's State Colleges and Universities in Trenton as Deputy Director of the NJ Association of State Colleges and Universities and as Director of the NJ Council of State Colleges.  Mr. Fernandez began his professional career as a Special Assistant to Governor Brendan Byrne and thus became the first Latino professional staffer to work in the NJ Executive Office.

Mr. Fernandez holds a Bachelors Degree in History and a Masters Degree in Latin American History from Rutgers, the State University and early in his career served as an Instructor and Teaching Assistant in History at Montclair State and Rutgers University.  In addition to his leadership of the Historical Commission, he has served on several state boards and commissions.   

Maxine N. Lurie holds a BA from Alfred University, a MA from the University of Rochester and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. She has taught at Marquette University, Rutgers University, and is a Professor of History and the former Chair of the History Department at Seton Hall University. An Early American Historian, she has taught and written about New Jersey History for the past twenty one years. 

The author of a number of scholarly articles (in New Jersey History, the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography and other publications), encyclopedia entries (in American National Biography and other works), she has also written on professional issues. Professor Lurie is the co-editor of The Minutes of the East Jersey Board of Proprietors (1985) v. 4; compiler of The New Jersey Anthology (1994, a collection of articles for use in teaching the history of the state); and co-editor-in-chief with Marc Mappen of The Encyclopedia of New Jersey (2004). She has written chapters, all on New Jersey, for The Uniting States: The Story of Statehood for the Fifty United States (2004), New Jersey in the American Revolution (2005), and Constructing Early Modern Empires: Proprietary Ventures in the Atlantic World, 1500-1750 (2007). She is currently working with Peter Wacker and Michael Siegel on Mapping New Jersey, which tells the history of the state through new and historical maps (Rutgers University Press forthcoming). 

Active in state history groups she is chair of the New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance, a member of the Board of the New Jersey Council for History Education, as well as of the State Historic Records Advisory Board. She served on the Executive Committee of the Mid Atlantic Regional Archives Association, the Teaching Division of the American Historical Association, and was the chair of the AHA-OAH Committee on Part Time/Adjunct Faculty. Professor Lurie has received several awards including, in 1997 the Richard J. Hughes award from the New Jersey Historical Commission.

Secretary of State Nina Mitchell Wells stated, "I look forward to working with Mike and Maxine to make our state's citizens aware of New Jersey's wonderful heritage."

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The New Jersey Historical Commission is a division of the Department of State.  The 17-member Commission's purpose is to preserve, promote, and disseminate the history of the state through grants, publications, media projects, and public programs.