This summer, two new deans will move into their campus suites in the University's residential colleges. Yale College Dean Richard H. Brodhead has announced that Susan Wennemyr, an assistant professor at Manchester College in Indiana, has been named to the deanship of Davenport College, while School of Drama alumnus and doctoral candidate Paul McKinley, who has been serving as acting dean of Saybrook College since January, will assume permanent responsibilities as dean there. New Davenport dean is scholar of Christian theology
At Manchester College, Ms. Wennemyr taught such courses as "History and Thought of Christianity to 1500," "Comparative Ethics" and "Feminist Theologies," and co-taught courses in the religions of India and other Asian cultures. She was also assistant director of a program that places college students in over 65 internships a year in Asia, Europe and South America.
Ms. Wennemyr is a graduate of Harvard University, where she was awarded the Radcliffe Presidential Teaching Assistantship for "exceptional promise in college teaching." After graduating, she won a Rotary Foundation International Scholarship to study Australian literature at the University of Melbourne, Australia. She went on to earn a master's degree in religion and a doctorate in theology at the University of Chicago, where she held the Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities. In graduate school, her fields of specialization included Christian theology, social-scientific approaches to religion and religious issues in contemporary culture.
Ms. Wennemyr will be joined in the Davenport College dean's suite by her husband, Magnus, and their three dogs: Scampi, Francisca and Rafi. She succeeds Davenport Dean Janice W. Murray, who served in the post for 10 years. New dean of Saybrook College is alumnus of drama school
While a number of candidates were considered for the deanship of Saybrook College, " i n the end it was clear that the best candidate was the person who was already doing an extraordinarily good job," Dean Brodhead said of Acting Dean Paul McKinley.
Mr. McKinley earned an M.F.A. in dramaturgy and dramatic criticism at the School of Drama, where he is now working on this doctoral thesis. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in film at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. For two years he was assistant editor of the tri-quarterly Theater magazine, and in 1996 held the Truman Capote Literary Fellowship. He has worked as associate literary manager at the Yale Repertory Theatre and as production dramaturg at the Rep and the drama school. He had similar affiliations with the Ensemble Studio Theater and La Mama Experimental Theatre in New York City.
Before being named acting dean, Mr. McKinley had already established ties with Saybrook College as the coordinator of its college seminars and as a resident graduate affiliate. He has been a teaching fellow for Theater Studies 110a and an instructor in the theater department at Southern Connecticut State University. In the coming years he will offer courses at Yale in his fields of interest, which range from playwriting and theater history to film theory.
Mr. McKinley succeeds Dean James R. Van de Velde, who left his post when called to active duty in Europe by the U.S. Naval Reserves.