Help wanted: two (maybe three) deanships available

The faculty committee that will recommend successors to Yale College dean Mary Miller ’81PhD and Graduate School dean Tom Pollard hasn't been appointed yet, but its job may get even bigger. The Yale Daily News reports today that president Peter Salovey ’86PhD is considering a faculty proposal to create a new post—Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS)—to oversee the faculty that Yale College and the Graduate School share. The new dean would take on some of the responsibilities of those two deans and some functions now carried out by the provost's office.

The proposal for a new dean who would report directly to the provost—as the college and graduate school deans do—is one of four options developed by a faculty committee that was charged with rethinking the administrative structure of the faculty. Administrators told the News that some kind of change is necessary, since the university and the faculty have grown dramatically over the years, and the deans' responsiblities along with them.

It was announced last week that both Miller and Pollard will be stepping down in June. Miller will have completed a five-year term as dean, but Pollard is stepping down a year early after a rocky tenure in which the biologist raised hackles among humanities faculty. Two years ago, an accumulation of faculty grievances—dissatisfaction with Pollard, the allocation of faculty positions, a "shared services" plan for departments, and lack of faculty say over the establishment of Yale-NUS College—led to a mild faculty revolt and to calls for structural changes, like a faculty senate, to give professors more voice in administrative decisions. (Salovey is also considering the faculty senate proposal.)

In a separate News article, Salovey adviser Martha Highsmith ’95MDiv said that if Salovey decides to create the new FAS dean position, the yet-unnamed committee responsible for finding Miller and Pollard's successors would also recommend a candidate for the new post.