The Office of the Dean of the College will be restructured as two executive associate deans depart, Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron announced Saturday in a campus-wide e-mail.
The two deans set to leave their posts at the end of the academic year are Perry Ashley and Jonathan Waage, who is a professor of biology. Ashley, who has been at Brown for 29 years, has served as the primary pre-law adviser for undergraduates and the coordinator of the Resumed Undergraduate Education and Brown-Tougaloo exchange programs. He is leaving "to pursue other opportunities at Brown next year and beyond," Bergeron wrote in her e-mail.
Waage, who has been a member of the faculty for 34 years and an adviser to the dean of the College for five, will return to full-time teaching and research after a scheduled sabbatical next semester. Waage sits on the Undergraduate Teaching and Research Awards planning committee and has served on the College Curriculum Council and various faculty committees.
Waage and Ashley's departures follow those of associate deans of the College Armando Bengochea and Joyce Foster MA'92 PhD'97 and Assistant Dean of the College Sheilah Coleman.
Bergeron intends to use the departures as an opportunity for a fresh start- she wrote in her e-mail that her plan to reorganize her office developed as a response to the departures of Bengochea, Foster, Waage and Ashley.
"These developments required a rethinking of the structure of duties in my office; and so in October we invited two consultants to campus to offer their professional perspective," she wrote.
Bergeron wrote that she plans "a new emphasis on sophomore advising, advising in the concentrations, post-baccalaureate advising and academic standing, broadly conceived," and "a new focus" on writing competence, undergraduate research and tutoring.
The University will implement those changes by hiring three new deans - a deputy dean of the College, a dean for diversity programs and an associate dean for curriculum. Based on job listings in the Chronicle for Higher Education, the University is looking externally to fill at least two of those positions.
