A Trio of Women Who Have Been Appointed to Dean Positions at Highly Selective Colleges and Universities

Margaret Vendryes has been appointed dean of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, effective June 1. Dr. Vendryes is joining Tufts from York College of the City University of New York, where she is a professor, director of the Fine Arts Gallery, and chair of the department of performing and fine arts. Professor Vendryes is the author of Barthé: A Life in Sculpture (University Press of Mississippi, 2008).

Dr. Vendryes is a graduate of Amherst College in Massachusetts. She earned a master’s degree in art history at Tulane University in New Orleans and a Ph.D. at Princeton University in New Jersey.

Heather K. Gerken, the Sol & Lillian Goldman Professor of Law, has been appointed to a second five-year term as dean of Yale Law School. She is the first woman to serve as dean of Yale Law School. Professor Gerken has taught at Yale since 2006.

Professor Gerken is a summa cum laude graduate of Princeton University in New Jersey, where she is now a member of the board of trustees. She earned her law degree at the University of Michigan.

Gretchen Long, the Frederick Rudolph ’42 – Class of 1965 Professor of American Culture at highly rated Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, will serve as the next dean of the college. Professor Long joined the department of history at Williams College in 2003. A historian and scholar of race and medicine, Dr. Long is the author of Doctoring Freedom: The Politics of African American Medical Care in Slavery and Emancipation (University of North Carolina Press, 2012).

Dr. Long is a graduate of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. She holds a master’s degree in history and a Ph.D. in American history from the University of Chicago.