Jessie Royce Hill, an admissions officer, has been named the next dean of Silliman College.
Hill who has served as an associate director of admissions since 2006, was announced as dean Tuesday evening in the Silliman Dining hall. Yale College Dean Mary Miller said Hill was selected from a pool of approximately 70 applicants for the dean position.
“There was nothing random whatsoever in how you were selected for Yale College. And a number of you were selected by Dean Hill,” Miller said. “She actually knows your back stories, she’s read you inside and inside, and she’ll now have the pleasure of knowing what happens to you at Yale.”
Silliman Master Judith Krauss said Hill’s application for the dean position caught her eye because Hill exudes interest and compassion. The fact that Hill trains all the senior interviewers at the admissions office led Krauss to believe that Hill could easily work with a team of freshman counselors.
Hill will join the Silliman community along with her husband, Dan Goren, a lawyer, and her daughters Lily, 8, and Ada, 6. Krauss added that she thinks it will be “fun” for Silliman to have a young family in the college.
“There are moments in your life that you feel with absolute conviction that you’re in the right place. There’s nowhere that I’d rather be than in this most spirited college at Yale,” Hill told a crowd of cheering Silliman students.
The family will move into the Silliman dean’s apartment this summer, along with their cat, Hill said. Hill added that she will start teaching English 114 in the 2015-’16 academic year.
“I’m excited to have someone new and energetic and has seen Yale from a different point of view,” said Silliman student Emma Poole ’17.
Renita Heng ’16 said she is excited to have a family move into Silliman, something she thinks will change the dynamic of the college.
Before joining the Yale admissions office, Hill worked as a freelance reporter for National Public Radio on Cape Cod and in Boston and as an Arts and Features editor at the Vineyard Gazette on Martha’s Vineyard.
She graduated from Barnard College with a degree in History in 1996 and earned a Master’s from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in 2003.