Last month, University President Peter Salovey announced the respective reappointments of the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Tamar Gendler and dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Lynn Cooley.

In the press release announcing the reappointments, Salovey praised both women’s leadership and dedication to their positions. On July 1, both deans will begin their second five-year terms in their respective positions. The decision came after a confidential review process, according to Cooley and Gendler. In separate emails to the News, the deans stated they were honored to continue service with the University.

For Gendler, the reappointment will prolong her service as the inaugural dean of the FAS, a position she assumed at the time of its creation in 2014. The position aims to oversee the FAS through appointments and promotions –– responsibilities formerly shared by the deans of Yale College and the Graduate School ––  and management of the FAS budget.

“I am both humbled and honored to have been reappointed as Dean of the FAS,” Gendler wrote in an email to the News. “Yale is one of the world’s great educational institutions, home to many of the world’s most gifted scholars and teachers. I work as part of an extraordinary team charged with ensuring its continuing excellence. I am grateful to have been given the opportunity to continue this work.”

Under her leadership, the FAS underwent major changes, including the introduction of divisional deans –– which include deans of the humanities, social science and sciences –– and the shift to a new tenure system, which shortened the eligibility clock from nine years to eight. Last spring, Gendler also implemented the “Scholars as Leaders; Scholars as Learners” program –– a set of opportunities offered to faculty members, including the ability to take a semester off from teaching to enroll in short-term courses held each May.

Like Gendler, Cooley expressed similar enthusiasm to continue her service to the University.

“I am very glad to be continuing as Dean of the Graduate School,” Cooley wrote in an email to the News. “Graduate education is foundational in a great university, and the students and faculty of Yale Graduate School are extraordinary. As graduate students hone their skills as teachers and researchers, they add enormously to the education of Yale College students and to the research mission of the university. I am honored to work alongside faculty mentors, students and the GSAS team to improve graduate education at Yale.”

Cooley, who also began her deanship in 2014, has moved GSAS forward through initiatives aimed at student recruitment and the implementation of clearer guidelines for relationships between faculty and graduate students. In May of last year, Cooley announced several changes designed to increase awareness of bias and racism in the Yale community, a decision that came in the wake of a nationally-covered incident in which a white graduate student called the police on a black graduate student sleeping in a Hall of Graduate Studies common room.

Gendler is the Vincent J. Scully Professor of Philosophy, and Cooley is the C.N.H. Long Professor of Genetics.

Carly Wanna | carly.wanna@yale.edu

CARLY WANNA