University President Ronald J. Daniels named Beverly Wendland as the James B. Knapp dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences (KSAS), effective immediately.
Wendland was appointed as the interim KSAS dean in May of 2014, when former dean Katherine Newman left Hopkins for a position as provost at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Wendland said she has enjoyed her experience in the position thus far.
“There was such a positive response to the ways in which I seemed to be able to get different people to work together in ways that they hadn’t felt empowered to do before,” Wendland said.
As interim dean, Wendland has made an effort to support interdisciplinary studies within KSAS. She plans to continue these efforts by encouraging leaders in different departments to collaborate.
“I worked together with [Vice Provost for Student Affairs] Kevin Shollenberger and Homewood Student Affairs to think about how we can link together academic programming with student life activities and making them meet in the middle in ways that are going to be more exciting for the students,” Wendland said.
She emphasized the importance of collaboration between the diverse departments of KSAS, in addition to working with other divisions of the University.
“One thing that’s very evident to me, just within our own school — we have such a plethora of diverse disciplines that we study, that there are so many opportunities for interdisciplinary, fun, exciting, cool things just within our school,” Wendland said.
Wendland has already made further plans for her tenure as dean. She aims to expand the University-sponsored activities that accompany the freshman summer book read beyond the usual essay contest.
“I didn’t know that there even was a freshman book and this essay contest until I started going to the freshman convocations, and we would hear about this essay winner, and then I thought, ‘I would really like to read that essay,’ and then there’s nowhere to find it,” Wendland said.
Wendland plans to coordinate the freshman summer reading with next year’s freshman class offerings.
“It seems to me like there are a lot of opportunities there to have some of our faculty read the book before the students come onto campus and have some of the courses that our faculty are offering to freshmen touch on some of the issues raised in whatever book was elected,” she said.
Wendland also plans to launch a dean’s speaker series in order to highlight the realm of interdisciplinary possibilities that she hopes students will pursue.
“We can invite in people who work in interesting cross-disciplinary areas, like a science-fiction writer who is a scientist by training but is now active in the writing discipline,” Wendland said.
She hopes to invite a lineup of similar experts in cross-disciplinary fields to speak to Hopkins undergraduates.
“There are so many possibilities that I have on the tip of my brain for people who are working at these intersections of the arts and our more rigorous academic disciplines. Just by bringing people like that to campus, [we] will indicate to our students what some of the possibilities are that they might not be thinking about,” she said.
Beyond specific events that Wendland has started coordinating, she expressed an overarching dual plan for KSAS.
“Our real mission is to train the leaders of tomorrow. The other thing is that I think we are a really great university, and I want to make sure that everybody is on board with that feeling, to the point that anytime a visitor comes to our campus, they leave wishing that they could stay,” Wendland said.
Wendland also hopes to improve the University’s attractiveness and raise morale by increasing the diversity of its students and faculty.
“We’re all focused on improving diversity and inclusiveness... The world really is getting smaller every day, and we really need to open ourselves up to being able to interact constructively with people from all different points of view and backgrounds,” Wendland said.
She believes that more diversity in KSAS will offer students practical advantages that they can use long after graduation.
“I think diversity’s going to be important to make sure the most exciting and relevant things are happening here. It’s really important for preparing our students to go back out into the world, which is this big mixture of everything, so that mixture needs to be represented here,” Wendland said.
Wendland is also making an effort to pursue diversity through the admissions process.
“We’re talking with [Vice Provost for Admissions and Financial Aid] David Phillips... We’ve talked about how we can present the school to prospective students as an inviting climate and how we can make sure that students from various backgrounds recognize that we are a place that wants them here,” Wendland said.
Wendland also described some of the financial efforts that Hopkins is making to allow for maximal diversity.
“We are working hard on identifying scholarship donors so that we can make sure that people who maybe don’t have the financial means but have the makeup of an ideal Hopkins student have the opportunity to attend here,” she said.
Wendland said that the intellectual curiosity of students in KSAS inspires her. She referred to a freshman course offering called “Project Lab: Phage Hunting,” which involves analyzing the biotic composition of dirt samples.
“There’s a blog that goes along with the course, and sometimes, when there are days when I have a slightly jaded feeling about things, I will go to that blog, and I am reminded of the enthusiasm and excitement that is pouring forth from these students’ entries in that blog about the real joy of learning and the thrill of discovery,” she said.
Wendland also works as a professor and runs a research lab in the Department of Biology. She has served on several search committees for deans of various University divisions, as well as two major University leadership committees.
Wendland earned her Bachelor’s of Science degree from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). She then went on to Stanford University for her Ph.D. and returned to UCSD for her post-doctoral fellowship.
