New Deputy Provosts
 
Date:   August 15, 2007
To:      Colleagues
From: Andrew D. Hamilton
Re:     New Deputy Provosts

Dear Colleagues:

I write to inform you of some important changes in the Provost’s Office precipitated by the departure of Kim Bottomly to become the President of Wellesley College. Because of the high value we place on faculty career development, in general, and the continued diversification of faculty, in particular, we have decided to divide Kim’s former responsibilities and create a new deputy provost dedicated to faculty development. This allows us to return the full attentions of a deputy provost to another of our institutional priorities, the strengthening of science and technology at Yale. I am therefore very pleased to announce the appointments of Judith Chevalier, William S. Beinecke Professor of Finance and Economics, as Deputy Provost for Faculty Development and of Steven Girvin, Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics and Applied Physics, as Deputy Provost for Science and Technology. Both will assume their responsibilities on September 1, 2007.

The deputy provosts help me shape and implement the academic, administrative and budgetary policies of the University, particularly with respect to the schools, departments and academic units they serve. Judy Chevalier will focus her attention on broad and important issues relating to faculty development. Working with the deans and other deputy and associate provosts, she will be involved in developing new programs and policies focused on increasing faculty diversity and the retention of women and underrepresented minorities in the sciences and establishing career development for all faculty. Steve Girvin will take responsibility for the FAS departments in the natural sciences and the departments of Anthropology, Psychology, Statistics, and Linguistics, the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, the Peabody Museum, and the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies, as well as several administrative units that contribute directly to activities in the sciences. In addition, he will be an important part of our planning team as we fully integrate the research facilities at the new West Campus into the scientific enterprise of the University.

Judy Chevalier is a 1989 graduate of Yale College and holds a 1993 PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was previously an assistant professor at Harvard University and a professor at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. Judy’s research is in the areas of both finance and industrial organization. Among her many professional responsibilities she is an elected member of the Executive Committee of the American Economic Association, a former co-editor of the American Economic Review and a former board member of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economic Profession. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1999 she won the first biennial Elaine Bennett prize given by the American Economic Association. At Yale, Judy is a member of the Council of the Women Faculty Forum, a Fellow of Davenport College, and a member of the executive committee for the MacMillan Center.

Steve Girvin obtained a B.S. in physics from Bates College in 1971 and Masters degrees from the University of Maine and Princeton University, where he also received his PhD in 1977. He did his postdoctoral research at Indiana University and at Chalmers University in Göteborg, Sweden. After serving as a staff physicist at the National Bureau of Standards (now NIST) from 1979 to 1987, Steve joined the faculty of Indiana University and moved to Yale in 2001. Steve’s research focuses on theoretical studies of collective quantum behavior in many particle systems and since moving to Yale he has developed an interest in quantum optics and quantum computation. He is a Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2006. In 2007 he was awarded the Buckley Prize of the American Physical Society. At Yale, Steve is a Fellow of Morse College and has previously served as Director of Graduate Studies in the Physics Department and Associate Director of the Yale Institute for Nanoscience and Quantum Engineering.

Please join me in welcoming Judy and Steve to the Provost’s Office where we all look forward to an enjoyable and productive working relationship in the years ahead.

Sincerely,

Andrew D. Hamilton