Laurie Patton, a professor at Emory University, will join Duke July 1 as the new dean of the faculty of Arts and Sciences, President Richard Brodhead and Provost Peter Lange announced Wednesday.
Patton, Charles Howard Candler professor of religions at Emory University and director of Emory’s Center for Faculty Development and Excellence, is the first woman to serve in the position since 1985, when Ernestine Friedl stepped down from the position, said University Archivist Timothy Pyatt.
The dean oversees 34 academic departments and more than 600 professors within Arts and Sciences. She will be the primary authority on Trinity’s budget and responsible for ensuring financial stability and developing profitable programs. Patton will lead Trinity College with new initiatives and strategic planning regarding educational programming and faculty decisions.
“I am tremendously excited about coming to Duke. From the minute I met the search committee, and then later other faculty, students and administrators, I sensed a likeness of mind and spirit about the next step that a great university might take in twenty-first century education,” Patton wrote in an e-mail Wednesday. “I think Duke has a record of both rigor and creativity that makes it more nimble in responding to crucial educational challenges.”
Patton was recommended by the Arts and Sciences search committee composed of 15 administrators, faculty members and students. The pool was narrowed to three finalists in the last two weeks.
“I am enormously pleased that Laurie Patton has agreed to become the next dean of Arts and Sciences,” Lange said in a Duke news release. “She is a most gifted scholar and teacher whose career has demonstrated a commitment to research and teaching and to how the two can most productively be combined. She has a breadth of vision about how Arts and Sciences can continue to sustain and enhance its existing great strengths while innovating and thereby advancing its highest priorities and those of the University.”
Patton will replace Alvin Crumbliss, interim dean of Trinity College and dean of the faculty of Arts and Sciences. The University will retire the title of dean of Trinity College at the end of the academic year—meaning the new dean will only be referred to as the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. As part of the change, Steve Nowicki, dean and vice provost of undergraduate education, will take on a greater role in enhancing the student experience across schools, according to a letter sent to deans and senior leaders Oct. 8.
“Duke has already impressed me as a place with a clear openness to innovation as well as a healthy understanding of tradition,” Patton said. “It is in the ‘DNA’ of the institution to work at the cutting edge in unexpected ways.”
Crumbliss, Bishop-MacDermott chemistry professor, has taught at Duke for 40 years. He said he plans to spend a sabbatical in Genoa, Italy. Crumbliss was appointed interim dean in May 2010 following the departure of George McLendon, who left Duke to serve as provost of Rice University.
Patton received her bachelor’s degree from Harvard College in 1983 and a doctorate degree in religion from the University of Chicago in 1991. She has conducted extensive research on early Indian ritual and narrative, comparative mythology, literary theory in religion and women in Hinduism in modern India. She is the author or editor of eight books and has written more than 45 scholarly articles. Patton also studied as a Fulbright scholar in Israel in 2000, and again in India in 2004.
“Everyone who met Laurie was impressed by her intense involvement in interdisciplinary, translational, global scholarship,” said Lynn Smith-Lovin, professor of sociology and chair of the search committee, in the news release. “They were stirred by her vision for Arts and Sciences. I was struck by the enthusiasm about her candidacy across students and faculty from many different disciplines and academic positions.”
Patton said she hopes to lead the University in innovative ways in four major areas: interdisciplinary work within and between departments, international partnerships, civic engagement and interdisciplinary digital initiatives.
In the past two years, Patton has offered a new translation of “The Bhagavad Gita,” a sacred Hindu text for the Penguin Classics Series, and edited a series of new essays, “Notes from a Mandala: Essays in the Indian History of Religions in Honor of Wendy Doniger.”
Patton served as chair of Emory’s religion department from 2000 to 2007, as founder and co-convenor of the Religions and the Human Spirit Strategic Plan and as Winship Distinguished Research Professor. She received the Emory Williams Award—Emory’s most prestigious honor for teaching—in 2005.
She also recently consulted with the White House Office of Faith-Based Community Partnerships on interfaith literacy and the U.S. Department of Education’s Initiative on Civic Engagement.
Trinity has accomplished a number of goals this year related to programming, budget stability and interdisciplinary research. Arts and Sciences has maintained a balanced budget for the 2010-2011 academic year, built new programs for undergraduates like the neuroscience major, promoted faculty-mentored research, recruited new faculty members and enhanced interdepartmental teaching, Crumbliss wrote in a Tuesday e-mail.
“In a real sense, the most important job of the dean is to make others successful, so that the institution can be successful in providing stellar educational and research opportunities for our students,” Crumbliss noted.
Patton said she will be “following [Crumbliss’] lead on budget decisions” this Spring, and continuing his policy of careful evaluation and efficiency. She will formally step into her position this July concurrent with planning for the 2011-2012 academic year.
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