A new administrative position-dean of undergraduate education-will be implemented at the University by Fall 2007, President Richard Brodhead announced at Thursday's Academic Council meeting.
The new dean will serve to better integrate the multiple aspects of undergraduate life-including student affairs and academics-and will act as the University's principal spokesperson on undergraduate education.
"[There is] a certain compartmentalization of the administrative structures," Brodhead said. "But in student experience, academics and student life tend to be quite continuous-not much boundaries-and as we look to the future, we're looking to emphasize the integration of education more and more."
The new dean will work closely with the vice president for student affairs and with the senior administrators in Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, the Pratt School of Engineering and the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences. The dean will report directly to the provost.
"The people who work in existing offices are excellent... but they've had to work very hard to try to cooperate across these sorts of administrative chasms," Brodhead said. "So this is an effort to put the administrative structure where we want our values to be, in favor of making the whole add up to a whole."
The dean will be selected from within the University, and the search committee will submit a list of candidates to Brodhead and Provost Peter Lange for final consideration by June 1.
"It has to be somebody who has a faculty appointment, who knows and loves the world of teaching, who knows and loves the world of students through teaching and who has a deep concern for the welfare of students outside their teaching," Brodhead said.
Though collaboration among the branches of undergraduate life has already been a productive area of focus for the University, the new dean will provide the administration an even greater capacity for integration, said Larry Moneta, vice president for student affairs.
"The [Undergraduate Leadership Group] as convened by the provost has proven to be an outstanding forum for collaboration on behalf of the undergraduate experience, but it's been an impossible role for the provost to do himself," Moneta wrote in an e-mail.
"Thus, the model for our work is already well established, and the new dean can invest the time and energy necessary to further advance our work," he added.
The idea for creating the position is not a new one.
It has been brought up in the past and resurfaced during the drafting of the recent strategic plan, Brodhead said.
Nonetheless, his announcement of the position comes less than a month after the Feb. 27 release of the Campus Culture Initiative's report that assesses social, residential and academic life.
"The Campus Culture report doesn't propose this change, but I think this change is very much in the spirit of that report," Brodhead said. The position of the new dean, however, may help support ideas stemming from the report and subsequent campus discussions.
"The role... will provide an administrative means to implement recommendations as they evolve over the coming months," said Moneta, who also served as vice chair of the CCI steering committee.
The search committee will be headed by Peter Burian, chair of classical studies, professor of theater studies and former chair of the Academic Council.
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