More news about Yale people

Melanie Gonick/MIT

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Appointed

Nate Nickerson (left) has been appointed Yale’s vice president for communications. A former journalist with Fast Company, Nickerson joined MIT’s Technology Review as deputy editor in 2004, then moved to the university’s communications office in 2009. He was appointed MIT’s vice president for communications in 2015.

Sarah Drummond ’93 will be the new dean of Andover Newton Seminary—known as Andover Newton Theological School until its recent transition from an independent seminary in Newton Centre, Massachusetts, to an affiliated institution of the Yale Divinity School. Drummond has been a professor and administrator at the institution since 2005; as dean of faculty and vice president for academic affairs, she was instrumental in the school’s move.

Brendan Faherty has been appointed head coach of women’s soccer at Yale. He succeeds Rudy Meredith, who coached for 24 years before stepping down last fall. Faherty, who played soccer at Northeastern University, began his coaching career as head women’s coach at the University of New Haven for eight seasons. He has been head coach at Stony Brook University since 2015.

Stepping down

Robert Alpern, dean of the School of Medicine since 2004, will step down when his term ends in June, he announced in December. In his three terms, Alpern has overseen an overhaul of the school’s curriculum, a near tripling of the school’s endowment, and dramatic increases in faculty and research funding. Alpern is one of several doctors who were cited in a ProPublica investigation for failing to fully acknowledge their financial ties to pharmaceutical companies when publishing their research. Alpern told ProPublica that he believed his disclosure had been “adequate” and that he expanded the disclosure after questions were raised.