I write to share the news that Tamar Gendler, Vincent J. Scully Professor of Philosophy and professor of psychology and cognitive science, will complete her second five-year term as dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) on December 31, 2024, and return to the Yale faculty. Tamar inaugurated this role with brilliance and grace, and I am grateful for her leadership amid a period of unprecedented growth and historic restructuring.
At the beginning of 2025, Tamar will embark on a sabbatical that will take her to the West Coast. She will explore cutting-edge work in artificial intelligence and educational technology, forging relationships and embedding in the field. With a multidisciplinary perspective — honed by her oversight of academic units from English to physics — she will explore how these innovations are reshaping our understanding of communication, cognition, and learning.
When she returns to Yale, we will benefit from her experiences. Tamar will continue her field-defining research, offer imaginative courses for both undergraduate and graduate students, and lead efforts to help us determine the role of these innovations within institutions of higher education. Her entrepreneurial spirit and an embrace of outside-the-box thinking are two of the qualities that made Tamar the obvious choice to lead FAS a decade ago.
No detail escapes Tamar’s attention. She oversees over 1,000 faculty in some 50 different academic fields — nearly all of whom she knows by face and name. She manages offices and budgets; recruitments and promotions; policies and governance; anticipating needs and solving problems with warmth and resolve. Under her leadership, FAS has recruited more than 350 new ladder faculty members and instituted broad-based practices to recognize the contributions of those on the instructional track. More than half of the current FAS faculty came to Yale under her deanship.
But Tamar has done more than attract talent to Yale; she has worked relentlessly to secure the resources needed for them to excel. In the arts and humanities, the construction and renovation of the Humanities Quadrangle represented one of the largest investments in these disciplines in the nation in a generation. In the social sciences, under Tamar’s leadership, FAS established its Department of Statistics and Data Science; created the Tobin Center for Economic Policy at Yale; and lent faculty leadership to transformative campus projects from the Wu Tsai Institute for Neuroscience to the Jackson School of Global Affairs. In the sciences, the wide-ranging work of FAS scaffolds key campus priorities, from neuroscience and planetary solutions to quantum, data, and computer science.
All that work came out of an organization that did not exist when Tamar assumed her post a decade ago. Tamar conceived of and implemented the current structure of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, including her own role as dean. She has since built something new at a centuries-old institution that operates with the seamlessness of our most storied traditions. As she worked to shape an intellectual community worthy of one of the world’s great research universities, she cultivated practices of integrity and responsibility, and I am grateful that the culture she leaves behind is both rigorous and joyful, where faculty, staff, and students can thrive.
Tamar was clear when she started in this role that her intention was to create FAS and establish protocols that would enable it to grow. She has now accomplished all that she hoped to and more. We will miss her expertise, discernment, and humor. Still, I know that her work will continue to advance FAS and benefit all of us at Yale.
While Tamar serves out the final months of her term, Provost Scott Strobel and I will begin the process of searching for the next dean. The person who assumes this office will have enormous shoes to fill, but also an incredible foundation on which to build. We will reach back out soon to provide more information about the search.
In the meantime, please join me in thanking Tamar Gendler for her decade of service as dean. I look forward to working with her this semester and, after her leave, welcoming her back to Yale as an eminent scholar, devoted teacher, trusted advisor, and influential voice in higher education.
Sincerely,
Maurie McInnis
President
Professor in the History of Art
Yale University
Dean Tamar Gendler
Dear Members of the Yale Community,
I write to share the news that Tamar Gendler, Vincent J. Scully Professor of Philosophy and professor of psychology and cognitive science, will complete her second five-year term as dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) on December 31, 2024, and return to the Yale faculty. Tamar inaugurated this role with brilliance and grace, and I am grateful for her leadership amid a period of unprecedented growth and historic restructuring.
At the beginning of 2025, Tamar will embark on a sabbatical that will take her to the West Coast. She will explore cutting-edge work in artificial intelligence and educational technology, forging relationships and embedding in the field. With a multidisciplinary perspective — honed by her oversight of academic units from English to physics — she will explore how these innovations are reshaping our understanding of communication, cognition, and learning.
When she returns to Yale, we will benefit from her experiences. Tamar will continue her field-defining research, offer imaginative courses for both undergraduate and graduate students, and lead efforts to help us determine the role of these innovations within institutions of higher education. Her entrepreneurial spirit and an embrace of outside-the-box thinking are two of the qualities that made Tamar the obvious choice to lead FAS a decade ago.
No detail escapes Tamar’s attention. She oversees over 1,000 faculty in some 50 different academic fields — nearly all of whom she knows by face and name. She manages offices and budgets; recruitments and promotions; policies and governance; anticipating needs and solving problems with warmth and resolve. Under her leadership, FAS has recruited more than 350 new ladder faculty members and instituted broad-based practices to recognize the contributions of those on the instructional track. More than half of the current FAS faculty came to Yale under her deanship.
But Tamar has done more than attract talent to Yale; she has worked relentlessly to secure the resources needed for them to excel. In the arts and humanities, the construction and renovation of the Humanities Quadrangle represented one of the largest investments in these disciplines in the nation in a generation. In the social sciences, under Tamar’s leadership, FAS established its Department of Statistics and Data Science; created the Tobin Center for Economic Policy at Yale; and lent faculty leadership to transformative campus projects from the Wu Tsai Institute for Neuroscience to the Jackson School of Global Affairs. In the sciences, the wide-ranging work of FAS scaffolds key campus priorities, from neuroscience and planetary solutions to quantum, data, and computer science.
All that work came out of an organization that did not exist when Tamar assumed her post a decade ago. Tamar conceived of and implemented the current structure of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, including her own role as dean. She has since built something new at a centuries-old institution that operates with the seamlessness of our most storied traditions. As she worked to shape an intellectual community worthy of one of the world’s great research universities, she cultivated practices of integrity and responsibility, and I am grateful that the culture she leaves behind is both rigorous and joyful, where faculty, staff, and students can thrive.
Tamar was clear when she started in this role that her intention was to create FAS and establish protocols that would enable it to grow. She has now accomplished all that she hoped to and more. We will miss her expertise, discernment, and humor. Still, I know that her work will continue to advance FAS and benefit all of us at Yale.
While Tamar serves out the final months of her term, Provost Scott Strobel and I will begin the process of searching for the next dean. The person who assumes this office will have enormous shoes to fill, but also an incredible foundation on which to build. We will reach back out soon to provide more information about the search.
In the meantime, please join me in thanking Tamar Gendler for her decade of service as dean. I look forward to working with her this semester and, after her leave, welcoming her back to Yale as an eminent scholar, devoted teacher, trusted advisor, and influential voice in higher education.
Sincerely,
Maurie McInnis
President
Professor in the History of Art
Yale University