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| Lisa Gates, dean of
the class of 2007, holds a photograph of her class inside her office in
North College. Gates monitors the academic performance of 760 students. |
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| Posted 11.02.05 |
Class Dean Guides Students to Make Good Decisions
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Steering students
toward success is Lisa Gates’ top priority. As dean of the class of 2007,
she’s constantly helping students meet or exceed their academic goals on the way to
graduation.
Gates meets with many of her 760 students during the academic year. As a
class dean, she is responsible for monitoring the academic performance of
her class and ensuring students are making appropriate progress toward
earning their degrees. But she also helps students resolve academic or
personal problems, including working with faculty and staff in many other
departments to assist students.
"Sometimes they just need my signature for a form," she says. "But sometimes
they're having difficulty in a particular class or there’s an urgent
personal situation and a midterm looming the next day. You never know what
you're going to get."
Gates says that one of the principal challenges in being a dean is helping
students learn to make good decisions and take responsibility for their
actions.
"We expect students to be capable, reasonably organized, and responsible,”
she says. “But we forget that these are adult abilities have to be learned
and developed with time and experience. It's my job to both support them
through a difficult situation but also push them to take something
constructive away from the experience. You can be an extremely bright
person, but if you aren't getting to class and managing your time
effectively for whatever reason, you're going to run into trouble."
She also serves as a general resource for students, discussing different
academic directions, internships, leaves of absence and study abroad
opportunities. For many students, making a connection to a particular
faculty member or a specific program on campus can shape their undergraduate
experience in a fundamental way, Gates says.
"That's one of the most satisfying aspects of this position, when a student
comes to me with a vague interest and I can give a few names of people that
they might want to talk with,” she says. “It's nice to have a role in that
process."
In 2004, the Dean of the College Office's model for class management was revised. Deans who
normally worked with just one class now follow the same group of students
throughout their academic career.
“What’s good about this new model is that, students can easily remember who
their dean is, and they can get to know us better,” Gates says. “By working
with a student multiple years, we’ll be able to support them better.”
Gates usually splits her time between meeting with students and following up
with student issues. Nishita Roy ’07, met with Dean Gates this semester to
discuss a pressing problem.
“My first impression of Dean Gates was that she is extremely personable, but
also very serious about her work,” Roy says. “She listened attentively to my
problem and took notes when I was talking, which proved that she was intent
on ensuring that she had all of the facts straight. I felt extremely
comfortable talking with Dean Gates and confident in her desire to assist me
to the best of her abilities.”
Roy says her interaction with Dean Gates reaffirms her opinion that the
class deans are generally a valuable resource for students.
“They’re committed to improving students' lives at Wesleyan,” she says.
Gates usually splits her time between meeting with students and following up
with student issues. She holds daily open-office hours. Gates also serves on
the International Student Coordinating Committee, coordinates the Beinecke
Scholarship Committee and the Janina Montero prize, and participates in
various other committees and Dean of the College Office initiatives.
Gates moved to Connecticut in 1996 with her husband, Michael Roy, director
of academic computing in Information Technology Services. In 2001, she
joined the Dean of the College Office as an associate dean and director of New Student
Programs. In this position, she worked on redesigning the orientation
program for new students and other student programs to help students
transition into the university. In 2004, she became a class dean.
Gates holds a bachelor’s degree in German language and women studies from
Dartmouth College and a Ph.D in Germanic languages and literatures from
Harvard University. She studied abroad in Berlin, Germany and received a
Fulbright scholarship to study at the University of Hamburg. Her
dissertation focused on the representation of blackness in late-19th and
20th-century German culture, looking specifically at the way in which "racial
otherness" served as a vehicle for exploring how Germans understood their own
cultural identity.
“I’ve always been interested in the German culture. It is rich with literary
history, and this was an interesting way of connecting my professional
experiences on issues of race in American culture with my graduate work in
German,” Gates says.
Prior to Wesleyan, she worked at Duke University as a project manager for
the Black Periodical Literature Project, a collection of fiction, literary
materials and poems produced by the African-American press between 1827 and
1940. She also taught German language and literature courses at Harvard and
the University of Connecticut.
“Teaching is something I’d like to do again,” she says. “I would enjoy
interacting with students in another setting. It’s a part of my former life
that I miss.”
Gates and Roy live in Higganum with their three children, Ethan, 12; Anna,
9, and Julian, 3. In her spare time, she enjoys gardening herbs and flowers,
cooking and writing. Her work is often published in Preview Connecticut’s
art section.
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| By
Olivia Bartlett, The Wesleyan Connection
editor |
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