Dear Members of the Fordham Community,
It is with great pleasure that President Tetlow and I announce the appointment of Ann Gaylin, Ph.D., as dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, effective August 1, 2022. Dr. Gaylin comes to Fordham from Yale University, where she serves as associate dean for Graduate Education. Before arriving at Yale in 2017, Dr. Gaylin was the associate dean of Undergraduate Education for Academic Support at Harvard University. She has also served as an associate dean at Brown University, and as a program officer at the American Council on Learned Societies.
Dr. Gaylin earned a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Princeton University. She joined the faculty in the Department of Literature at Yale University in 1994 and has taught a wide range of literature courses at Yale, Princeton, and Brown Universities. A scholar of English and French 19th- and 20th-century literature and culture, Dr. Gaylin is the author of Eavesdropping in the Novel from Austen to Proust (Cambridge 2002).
Fordham’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences offers degrees in 29 different fields of study and enrolled 917 students last fall. As dean, Dr. Gaylin will serve as the chief academic officer of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences; bear responsibility for setting and implementing the vision for the School; work in close partnership with the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill, the dean of Fordham College at Lincoln Center, and faculty of Arts and Sciences; and report directly to the provost.
Dr. Gaylin is a seasoned administrator with a deep knowledge of and commitment to graduate education. She brings a wealth of experience working with faculty in promoting academic excellence, encouraging programmatic and curricular innovation, fostering a diverse and inclusive community, and developing student support services. Through her many prior roles, Dr. Gaylin has consistently demonstrated a collaborative style and a pragmatic approach to solving problems. She impressed the search committee, faculty, and graduate students, with whom she met during her campus interview, as she conveyed her vision for how the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences can honor tradition while forming the next generation of teachers and leaders. President Tetlow added, “Dr. Gaylin will further Fordham’s distinctive Jesuit mission of cultivating critical thinkers who seek to put their learning in the service of a more just world.”
I would like to thank the search committee, chaired by Vice Provost Jonathan Crystal, Ph.D., for a comprehensive and successful national search under the unusual circumstances occasioned by the tragic and untimely death of Dean Tyler Stovall. I likewise extend my profound gratitude to Patrick Hornbeck, D.Phil., professor of theology, who ably served as interim dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences from January through June of 2022. I have appointed Sara Lehman, Ph.D., to serve as acting dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences for the month of July in anticipation of Dr. Gaylin’s arrival on August 1, at which point, Sara will return to the role of associate dean in the Graduate School.
Please join me in enthusiastically welcoming Dr. Gaylin to the Fordham community.
Sincerely,
Dennis C. Jacobs, Ph.D.
Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs
