JE’s Newly Appointed Master Is a Familiar Face at the College: Interim Master Penelope Laurans

Penelope Laurans, associate dean of Yale College, special assistant to the president and lecturer in English, has been named the next master of Jonathan Edwards College (JE) for a four-year term, beginning July 1.

“The friends and fellows whom Dean Miller and I consulted were enthusiastic in their support for the continued leadership of Dean Laurans, who stepped up to the interim mastership of JE in January 2009, after the sudden illness of Richard Lalli, a close friend of hers, who had been expected to begin his mastership at that time,” noted President Richard C. Levin in his announcement of the appointment. “They cited her energy and her passion for the college, as well as her good judgment, warmth and accessibility.”

Laurans came to Yale in 1973 as an assistant professor from Harvard, where she received her Ph.D. in English. Since then, she has held various positions at Yale, among them the associate director of admissions, associate editor and then editor of The Yale Review, and dean of summer programs.

Since 1993, she has divided her time between Yale College and the Office of the President, undertaking duties in both, and often teaching a course in “Versification” for the Department of English. In assuming the mastership on a longer-term basis, Laurans will relinquish her position in the Yale College Dean’s Office, while retaining her position as special assistant to the president and lecturer in English.

Laurans was the deputy to Dean Richard Brodhead on the Committee on Yale College Education; staffed the committee reviewing appointments procedures in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences; led the University through its 1999 reaccreditation and its athletic certification; developed the academic program for the Yale Tercentennial; and was vice chair of both the committees studying the possibility of adding two residential colleges. She works closely in an advisory role with both the dean of admissions and the director of athletics, serves as the NCAA faculty representative and spends considerable time advising and mentoring Yale undergraduates.

During her years at Yale, Laurans has been active in the dance, music and figure skating communities and has served as an adviser both to Yaledancers and to the Opera Theater of Yale College, and has attended many athletic and arts events. “It may be no accident,” noted Levin, “that since she has taken up the position of interim master, Jonathan Edwards, after many fallow years of non-competitiveness, is at the moment 229 points ahead of the closest competitor in the 2009-2010 Tyng competition.”

Thirty-five years ago, Laurans was among the first women appointed to the Jonathan Edwards Fellowship. She has served on many JE committees and is the only person to have been both acting dean of a residential college (in 1987) and interim master.

Over the years, she has published articles and reviews, and edited books on English and American poetry. She served on the Advanced Placement English literature test development committee for five years, and also spent several terms as the lead grader on the poetry portion of the College Board Advanced Placement literature examination.

Her late husband was Robert Fitzgerald, the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard and a renowed translator of the “Odyssey,” “Iliad” and “Aeneid.” Both of her nephews rowed lightweight crew for Yale in the 1990s, and her nephew Mas is a neurosurgeon at the Yale School of Medicine.