Camille Lizarribar, a former adjunct lecturer in the Directed Studies program, will be the new dean of Ezra Stiles College, Yale College Dean Mary Miller wrote in an e-mail to Ezra Stiles students on Wednesday.

“I am pleased to report that, after consulting with Master Pitti and a committee of Ezra Stiles College fellows and students, I have recently appointed Ms. Camille Lizarribar to be the next Dean of Ezra Stiles College,” Miller wrote.

While she is not currently teaching at Yale, Lizarribar lectured in the literature and the history and politics sections of the Directed Studies program in the spring and fall semesters of 2007, and she will teach one course per year beginning in 2011, she said.

Lizarribar will replace outgoing Dean Jennifer Wood, who stepped down from her role at the end of the academic year, and is the third residential college dean to be appointed this spring. Mia Genoni, a Mellon Special Collections humanities postdoctoral fellow and humanities lecturer, was named dean of Berkeley College late last month, and Hilary Fink, an associate professor and the director of undergraduate studies in the Slavic Languages and Literatures Department, was appointed dean of Branford College in April.

Lizarribar said that after being approached by the search committee in the spring, she was “very impressed” by the students, fellows and staff she met during the interview process and “knew right away” that she wanted to join the Ezra Stiles community.

“I have always enjoyed working with students, and the deanship is a unique opportunity to do so both at the individual level and within the broader context of a community,” she said. “My aim is to be a resource for my students for any matters, from the mundane to the life-changing, and to be an active contributor to the daily life and well-being of the college.”

In addition to lecturing in the Directed Studies program, Lizarribar has worked as a legal research associate at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, where she helped to organize a colloquium on food, agriculture and the environment this spring, she said. Before coming to New Haven, she spent a decade at Harvard, where she taught and advised undergraduates as a teaching fellow, tutor and lecturer, Miller said in her e-mail. Fluent in Spanish, English, French and Italian, Lizarribar has also worked as a private attorney and translator for the District and Superior courts in Boston.

“The students, fellows and administrators who met with Camille in the spring were really taken by her warmth, her range of experiences and her background,” Ezra Stiles College Master Stephen Pitti said. “Her own life path will make her a terrific advisor: She started college pre-med, but went on to earn both a Ph.D. and a J.D. She’s worked in the corporate world and in government, she started her own business, and she has traveled widely.”

After graduating from Brandeis University with the highest honors in comparative literature and French language and literature, Lizarribar — a native of San Juan, Puerto Rico — earned a doctorate in comparative literature from Harvard and a law degree from Harvard Law School.

In her spare time she enjoys biking, sailing, reading, watching movies and listening to jazz. She is also an avid baker whose repertoire includes a secret coconut flan recipe passed down from her mother, strawberry tarts she learned to make in Paris and “all kinds of cookies.”

Lizarribar said she, her husband and her two young sons — Arcadio, 5, and Tadeo, 3, — will move into Swing Space at the end of July as Ezra Stiles undergoes renovations. She added that her sons are particularly excited about the move after failing to spot a single moose (the Stiles mascot) while vacationing in Maine last summer.

Correction: July 5, 2010

An earlier version of this article misstated Hilary Fink’s position in the Slavic Languages and Literatures Department. She is the director of undergraduate studies, not the director of undergraduate students.