Yale University Provost Susan Hockfield recently announced the appointments of two deputy provosts to help shape and implement the academic, administrative and budgetary policies of the University.
Hockfield named Barbara Shailor, currently the director of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, as deputy provost for the arts, a position previously held by Diana Kleiner. She also named Andrew Hamilton, Irenee duPont Professor of Chemistry and Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, as deputy provost for science and technology, a post previously held by Pierre Hohenberg. Both will assume their responsibilities in the Provost’s Office on July 1, 2003.
“I am enormously grateful to Deputy Provosts Diana Kleiner and Pierre Hohenberg, who have served the University with extraordinary dedication and intelligence over the past eight years and have been invaluable colleagues and advisors in my first months as Provost,” said Hockfield. “I know that the Yale community joins me in wishing them all success as they return to their scholarship and teaching.”
Shailor will focus her attention on the schools of art, architecture, drama, music and divinity, the Institute of Sacred Music, the departments of history of art, classics and music, and the Yale University Art Gallery and the Yale Center for British Art. Hamilton will focus his attention on the departments in the natural sciences and the departments of anthropology, psychology, statistics and linguistics, the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, the Peabody Museum, the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies and the Haskins Laboratory. In addition, he will oversee several administrative units that contribute in central ways to activities in the sciences.
Shailor joined Yale in 2001 as the director of the Beinecke. Prior to that, she was dean of Douglass College, professor of classics at Rutgers University from 1996-2001, and was a faculty member and administrator at Bucknell University from 1975-1996. The recipient of a Ph.D. in Classical Philology from the University of Cincinnati, Shailor has been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies and the American Philosophical Society. She has published extensively, including five books and a series of articles on medieval and renaissance manuscripts. Her field of specialization is Latin paleography and encompasses the study of Visigothic manuscripts copied and illuminated in northern Spain in the 10th and 11th centuries. She is currently serving as treasurer of the Medieval Academy of America and as a trustee of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.
Hamilton came to Yale in 1997 from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh, where he had served as chairman from 1994 to 1997. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and held a NATO-Royal Society fellowship at the University of Strasbourg before accepting faculty positions at Princeton and the University of Pittsburgh. His research interests lie in bio-organic chemistry, with a particular focus in the synthesis of small molecules that can interact with biological molecules and can influence biological processes. These studies have provided new insights into drug design and have led to the development of possible therapies for cancer. Hamilton has published over 250 articles in professional journals and has served on a number of advisory panels and editorial boards.
Frank Turner, the John Hay Whitney Professor of History, has agreed to serve as interim director of the Beinecke until a new director is appointed. Gary Brudvig, professor of chemistry, will serve as interim chair of the Department of Chemistry from June 1 until a new chair is appointed.
