Yale Bulletin and Calendar

October 11, 2002|Volume 31, Number 6

Susan Hockfield begins second 5 years

Susan Hockfield
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Susan Hockfield, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, has been reappointed to the post for a second five-year term, President Richard C. Levin has announced.

Her new term will begin on July 1, 2003.

In a letter to faculty and associate and assistant deans at the Graduate School, Levin noted that he received "scores" of letter recommending Hockfield's reappointment.

"Among other things Susan was praised for her wisdom, grace, insight, patience, and her humor, as well as for her commitment to excellence in everything associated with the Graduate School," Levin wrote.

Levin went on to quote from letters he received from faculty about the Dean. "She is doing a masterful job," wrote one. "She has been a vital and effective presence on all matters concerning graduate education and continues to improve the lives of our graduate students in ways that make the graduate experience here the best in the country."

When appointed Graduate School dean in 1998, Hockfield became the first member of the medical school faculty to assume that post. She oversees academic and administrative policies for the school and its more than 2,300 students and 760 faculty members. She manages 65 departments and programs granting master's and doctoral degrees. Hockfield also oversees faculty appointments and promotions in the natural and social sciences.

A member of the Yale faculty since 1985, Hockfield is a neuroanatomist whose research focuses on the development of the mammalian brain. She and her laboratory staff have identified a family of cell surface proteins whose expression is regulated by neuronal activity early in an animal's life; one of these proteins is believed to play a role in the development of brain tumors. A particular interest for Hockfield is to gain an understanding of a deadly kind of brain tumors called gliomas. She has written more than 60 research articles and is the co-author of the book "Molecular Probes of the Nervous System: Selected Methods for Antibodies and Nucleic Acid Probes."

Hockfield earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Rochester and a Ph.D. in anatomy and neuroscience from the Georgetown University School of Medicine. She was a National Institute of Health postdoctoral fellow at the University of California in San Francisco 1979-1980. She became a staff investigator at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York in 1980. She served as director of the lab's Summer Neurobiology Program from 1985 to 1997, concurrent with her teaching post at Yale. She continues to act as a consultant to the program.

At Yale, Hockfield served as director of graduate studies for the Section of Neurobiology from 1986 to 1994, and was a member of the Graduate School's Executive Committee and of a committee to improve linkages between the biomedical sciences. She also assisted in the development of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program, a collaboration among biological science departments designed to foster interdepartmental interactions. She was appointed the William Edward Gilbert Professor of Neurobiology in 2001.

As dean, Hockfield has worked to im-,,prove the quality of life for graduate students, increase opportunities for informal interaction between graduate students and faculty, and enhance students' stipend support and health care coverage, among other initiatives. She has also been an advocate for graduate education at the national level.

The Dean's honors include the Esther A. and Joseph Klingenstein Fellowship in the Neurosciences and the Charles Judson Herrick Award from the American Association of Anatomists for outstanding contributions by a young scientist. She was selected as a Grass Traveling Scientist by the Society for Neuroscience in 1987. She is a member of a number of professional societies, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Society for Neuroscience.

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Campus Notes