Yale Bulletin and Calendar

October 11, 2002|Volume 31, Number 6

Richard Brodhead named to third term

Richard H. Brodhead
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Richard H. Brodhead, dean of Yale College since 1992, has agreed to continue for a third five-year term in his post, President Richard C. Levin has announced.

His third term will begin on July 1, 2003.

In a letter to Yale College faculty and deans, Levin said, "The response to my request for your assessment of the Dean's performance was overwhelmingly positive. It was gratifying to find my own admiration for his work echoed so enthusiastically."

Levin went on to quote some of the comments he received from faculty members about the Dean. "[I]t grows increasingly clear that he will enter the history books as one of the legendary deans of Yale College," wrote one. "His performance is brilliant. Students love him, the faculty trust him, the alumni are in awe of him. He represents the College and the University as we wish they could always be represented ..."

Another said, "[H]e is to articulation what Michael Jordan was to basketball, and can handle difficult situations with dignity, grace and good judgment ..."

As dean, Brodhead has a prominent role in all academic, administrative and extracurricular matters of Yale College and its more than 5,200 undergraduate students. He serves as chair of the Yale College Faculty and chief administrator of Yale College, sharing oversight of the faculty appointments process with the Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. He also serves on (and chairs in alternate years) all tenure appointment committees in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. He is responsible for policy in undergraduate education, housing and social life and has oversight of student services, undergraduate admissions and undergraduate financial aid. Some 15 deputy, associate and assistant deans, as well as the deans of Yale's 12 residential colleges, report to Brodhead and work with him in supporting and enriching student life.

Brodhead, who holds three degrees from the University, was the first Yale graduate in more than two decades to be named to the deanship.

A summa cum laude graduate of Yale College in 1968 with exceptional distinction in English, Brodhead earned an M.Phil. in 1970 and a Ph.D. in 1972. He joined the Yale faculty that year as an assistant professor and became a full professor in 1985. In 1990 he was appointed the Bird White Housum Professor of English. In 1995, while serving as dean, he was named the A. Bartlett Giamatti Professor of English. He chaired the English department from 1988 to 1993.

Brodhead has continued to teach during his deanship. A specialist in 19th-century literature, he is the author of "Cultures of Letters: Scenes of Reading and Writing in Nineteenth-Century America," "The School of Hawthorne" and "Hawthorne, Melville and the Novel." His edited volumes include "The Journals of Charles W. Chestnutt" and Chesnutt's "The Conjure Woman and Other Conjure Tales," as well as Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Marble Faun," "New Essays on Melville's Moby Dick" and "William Faulkner: New Perspectives." He has also lectured widely on the role of literature in 19th-century culture.

In his terms as dean, Brodhead has overseen enhancements to the University's undergraduate financial aid policy, the creation of a common area for student activities, and the establishment of a campus space for dramatic and other performances, among many other University initiatives.

Brodhead currently chairs the Committee on Yale College Education, which is reviewing and assessing undergraduate education at the University. The committee is expected to make recommendations about the future of undergraduate education at Yale in the spring of 2003. He has served on numerous other University committees, including the Tercentennial Planning Committee, which he co-chaired.

In 1979 the University honored Brodhead with one of its highest accolades, the William Clyde DeVane Medal for Outstanding Scholarship and Teaching, by the Yale Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. His other honors include Morse and Guggenheim Fellowships and Middlebury College's Bicentennial Medal.

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Campus Notes