Each spring, Tamar Gendler sits down with her fountain pen and writes a personalized note on the annual salary letter of each of the 1,000-plus faculty members in Yale's Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS). This ritual, which Gendler first began in 2015, is one example of how colleagues say Gendler has approached her role as the inaugural dean of the FAS -- with warmth, dedication, a razor-sharp eye for detail, and a belief in the value of the scholarship and teaching Yale faculty offer to students and the world.
Now Gendler has signed her last batch: on Dec. 31, she will officially finish her second term as the FAS dean. After a sabbatical, Gendler will return to Yale's faculty to continue what she calls her lifelong work: teaching, learning, and bringing people together as scholars, teachers, citizens, and friends.
"The work that has happened in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences over the last decade is the work of an entire community," Gendler said. "It's the work of everybody who has helped shape the Dean's Office and the FAS's departments and programs, it's the work of every individual who preceded us over the last 300 years in building this extraordinary institution, and it is work that is deeply rooted in a commitment to the power of ideas.
"It has been the honor of a lifetime to establish and lead this office, and to bring some of the most remarkable scholars in the English-speaking world to Yale."
A decade ago, the Dean's Office for Yale's Faculty of Arts and Sciences was simply an idea.
A presidentially appointed committee concluded that the time was right to create a dedicated administrative home for the FAS. Restructuring to establish a deanship would ideally generate the "time, resources, and focus to implement new visions to help Yale attract, develop, support, and retain the highest quality faculty and students in the world," said Jack Dovidio, the inaugural FAS Dean of Academic Affairs and Carl I. Hovland Professor Emeritus of Psychology.
The Dean's Office, established in 2014, had a distinctly startup-feel in the early years, with long days and late nights spent puzzling out how to move tenure processes, search procedures, and budget mechanisms to the new office.
"As the inaugural dean of the faculty, Tamar had to create the budget anew so it fit with both its current needs and a vision for the future," said Stephen Murphy, Yale's vice president for finance and chief financial officer. "She demonstrated an understanding of the resources needed to ensure excellence in the wide range of disciplines needed for Yale to remain a leading institution of research and teaching, and one that helps educate leaders for all sectors of society."
As the inaugural dean, a key part of Gendler's job was to create new processes, policies, and guidelines that would provide faculty with clarity about the goals and expectations around research, teaching, and promotions.
"Tamar developed faculty-driven systems to maximize rigor, fairness, and transparency, especially for tenure and promotions," said Marvin Chun, who worked closely with Gendler while he was dean of Yale College from 2017 to 2022. He added that it was hard to imagine a better colleague to have built the FAS dean's office essentially from scratch. "She set the highest standard for excellence in scholarship and teaching," he said, and "empowered divisional deans and staff members to recruit, support, and retain our outstanding faculty across all disciplines."
The tenure process was one of the first areas to which Gendler applied her energy. Before 2007, when Yale's first tenure and appointments process was introduced, there was no set path to tenure for FAS ladder faculty. Nor was there a centrally organized path for promotions for FAS instructional faculty. In 2016, after reviewing the 2007 tenure process, Gendler and a faculty committee introduced new guidelines and formalized the appointment tracks for both ladder and instructional faculty. Now, the tenure and appointment committees that meet to consider ladder faculty tenure cases "are like the best kind of graduate seminar you can imagine," according to Marc Robinson, current FAS dean of humanities.
"In my experience, Tamar has been able to shape those conversations deftly, pinpoint exactly what the stakes are of a scholar's argument, and bring us to the aspects of a file that we want to dig into more rigorously," Robinson said. "By the time we come to taking a vote, we really feel that we've done a 360-degree assessment of the case."
The FAS's commitment to supporting faculty also meant improving the recognition, benefits, and inclusion of instructional faculty. Phased retirement, professional development leave, and recalibrated compensation structures are just a few of the crucial improvements that have been made to improve instructional faculty's job security and belonging at the university.
"I think that she really cares about faculty, and she cares deeply about this institution," said Shiri Goren, senior lector II of modern Hebrew and director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. Goren is also a former member of the faculty FAS-SEAS Senate, which has advocated for increased benefits for instructional faculty.
"We may not always agree on how to go about things, but she is about making this place better for everyone," Goren said. When benefits for instructional faculty were codified, she added, "Tamar was truly happy -- one could feel the camaraderie."
For John Mangan, FAS senior associate dean and dean of faculty affairs and a founding member of the FAS dean's office, improving support for instructional faculty is a significant aspect of his work.
"There's more work to do; there's always more work to do," he said. "But if you look at the infrastructure we have built around supporting instructional faculty, that's been a real point of pride for me. It never could have or would have happened without Tamar supporting that vision, that idea that we should be more attentive to the interests of instructional faculty given how central they are to the curricular mission of this university."
Hiring and retaining outstanding faculty across the FAS has been a defining achievement of Gendler's terms as dean, faculty and administrators said.
"There's been tremendous, high-quality growth across the board," said Pericles Lewis, dean of Yale College. But simply bringing great faculty to New Haven, he said, isn't the end of the job: "You also have to create a sense of purpose and community that makes people want to work at Yale, and that, I think, is what Tamar's been very successful at."
Emphasizing the importance of belonging has been another hallmark of the FAS under Gendler's direction. This has included staunch support for hiring faculty members who reflect the many forms of diversity in Yale's student body and society, but has also come through in lighthearted elements of Gendler's leadership: numerous faculty commented on her fantastic holiday parties and her love of raffles, which feature playful prizes that highlight local businesses, staff and faculty accomplishments, and experiences on Yale's campus.
For people to do great work, they need somewhere to do it -- spaces that let them experiment, explore, ponder, and collaborate. Building and renovating such spaces has been a core priority of Gendler and her team, aided by Yale's Office of Facilities and numerous partners around campus.
The physical and intellectual impact those efforts can be felt across campus.
Numerous buildings have been added or updated to serve faculty across the FAS. These include the renovation of the Humanities Quadrangle, Kline Tower, the Yale Science Building, the Wright Lab, and labs attached to the Yale Peabody Museum. The Physical Science and Engineering Building, currently under construction, will bolster the future discoveries and innovations of Yale's physicists, quantum scientists, and engineers.
"Today, more than two-thirds of FAS departments have moved or will soon move to new or renovated space, providing collaborative and state-of-the-art settings for new cross-disciplinary scholarship," said Scott Strobel, Yale's provost. "The foundation that Tamar built in her tenure as inaugural FAS dean has helped ensure this kind of progress -- progress that allows Yale to fulfill its mission in the 21st century."
These infrastructure improvements also benefit several research institutes on campus, where faculty from a multitude of disciplines come together to discover and disseminate new knowledge. Gendler played a key role in founding the Wu Tsai Institute, an interdisciplinary research endeavor bringing together neuroscientists and data scientists from the FAS and the Yale School of Medicine, which moved to a renovated space on 100 College Street in 2023. Today, it houses first-in-class equipment for neuroimaging and computational modeling, and spaces for faculty to cross disciplinary boundaries and work together in labs, classrooms, and seminar spaces.
Gendler also spearheaded the Tobin Center for Economic Policy, raising funds that resulted in a modern new addition to Yale's economics department. "Tamar spoke at our opening: her speech was funny, and she was incandescent," recalled Steve Berry, the inaugural faculty director of the Tobin Center and David Swensen Professor of Economics. "It was illustrative of her charisma combined with her intelligence and command of detail."
Gendler initiated the role of divisional deans to bolster resources for faculty and balance the needs of the three divisions that make up Yale's FAS: the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Each divisional dean has direct oversight for the academic departments in their division, developing familiarity with the needs of their colleagues, and helping to marshal resources to improve teaching and learning in their respective divisions and beyond.
"There has been much more intention and attention paid to the sciences in Tamar's time," said Larry Gladney, the current FAS dean of science. Specifically, he pointed to the revitalization and growth of the math, astronomy, and physics departments as evidence of the profound impact of that attention. "There is more energy and a renewal of purpose about the role of sciences at Yale. Really promoting departments has become possible under Tamar, and I don't think it was possible before the FAS dean's office existed."
In the eyes of Robinson, the current FAS dean of humanities, the efforts made by the dean's office to recruit faculty members who broaden the expertise of historically excellent departments have had a deeply positive influence on his division.
"We've been able to attract leading scholars and practitioners to the university to complement the strengths and depths we already have," he said. "Departments that had perhaps been focused primarily on Europe or the United States now cover many more parts of the world. Different literatures, national histories, and cultures are now represented among our faculty and thus in the curricula that those departments teach."
Yale's social sciences departments have also benefited greatly from Gendler's foresight and focus, said Ken Scheve, current FAS dean of social sciences. For instance, he described the 2017 "reimagining" of the Department of Statistics and Data Science (S&DS) as a prime example of her ability to "see what Yale needs to be great, and then to bring the resources together to make it happen."
Many of Yale's peers have now emulated S&DS, said Scheve. "We see the fruition of those investments taking place now," he added. The number of S&DS faculty and majors has grown, and the department acts as a "magnet for both graduate students and undergraduates from other disciplines to come get trained and use those methods in their research," increasing the data science capabilities of the entire campus.
In celebrating the end of Gendler's service as dean, "what we're in part celebrating is where she's brought us to as an intellectual community, and how we've learned to support one another and the future excellence of our faculty, research, and teaching," said Scheve.
"She's given us an inspiring example, but she's also institutionalized so much of her own energy and attention to detail and resources.
"To have the same growth and improvements of excellence in the next ten years as we have in the previous ten years, mostly what's needed for us to do as a community is to emulate her by continuing to invest our own time and energy."
Peter Salovey, who was Yale's president from 2013 to 2024, said Gendler had been an "outstanding" dean whose strategic direction had been instrumental in establishing the office and nurturing faculty.
"I use the word 'strategic' because it captures one of Tamar's superpowers," he added. "She is an incredibly strategic thinker, and while I was serving as president, I often pressed her into service on university issues far beyond the FAS because I so valued her advice. I already miss working with her every day."
Gendler has been fiercely dedicated to creating the conditions in which excellent teaching can happen, and the conviction that a liberal arts education positions students well to understand the world, colleagues say. She has imbued that ethos into the faculty recruitment process, her work with each divisional dean, and her imaginative programs that support faculty growth as teachers and researchers.
Working closely with the deans of Yale College and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Gendler has helped ensure that undergraduates and graduate students alike are receiving the very best instruction Yale has to offer.
"Tamar has consistently kept the highest standards of both pedagogy and research in mind when considering faculty promotions and strategic ideas," said Lynn Cooley, who has been the dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences since 2014. "She has bedrock principles that guide every decision she's made, and I admire that she sticks with them and thinks of innovative ways to achieve them."
This is particularly true of teaching, said Lewis, dean of Yale College. "She's somebody who really understands the multiple purposes of the university, and particularly the interaction between the educational mission and the research mission. We've worked together on balancing those and making sure that faculty can develop as researchers and also as teachers, and that the excellent research of the faculty inspires our undergraduate and graduate programs."
Cooley added that Gendler's leadership alongside Marvin Chun during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly their efforts to help students and faculty return to campus safely to continue teaching and learning, was exemplary.
"The faculty worked nonstop through the summer of 2020 to figure out how to reopen the college," she said. "It was inspiring to watch. They were making very difficult decisions, and Tamar's leadership made all the difference in getting the college and the FAS through that challenging time in the best possible shape."
Creating space for faculty to pursue that continued growth has become a pillar of the work of the FAS dean's office. One of the most popular initiatives to have sprung from Gendler's imagination is the Scholars as Leaders; Scholars as Learners (SAL2) program. Launched in 2018, SAL2 cultivates a community of engaged faculty leaders by inviting them to teach courses to other faculty, take teaching relief to return to the classroom, and work with writing coaches, literary agents, and other professionals.
Goren, who taught a course to her peers as part of Faculty Academy and made use of Teaching Relief for Learning, called the initiative a highlight of working at Yale. "SAL2, in all of its elements, is remarkable," she said. "It really makes a difference to the faculty."
It is evident that Gendler places great importance on great teaching, both that of the faculty and her own, said Jenny Frederick, executive director of the Yale Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning.
"One of the things I've appreciated about working with Tamar is that she really cares about teaching," she said. Because people know teaching is important to both Gendler and to their professional evaluation and development, Frederick added, faculty are more willing than ever to work with the Poorvu Center to improve their own teaching. "In that way, Tamar has contributed to culture change."
Lucas Swineford, the Poorvu Center's executive director of digital education, said that he and his team got a glimpse of what Gendler will offer when she returns to teaching, including a new Open Yale course, "Public Plato: Ancient Wisdom in the Digital Age."
"The process of working with Tamar to develop this course has been illustrative of the way she works," he said. "Sometimes people have big ideas and then they don't go back to them, but she's the opposite. She's so invested in the idea and wants to perfect it to give learners the most optimal experience.
"To see the energy she put into this project, it's incredible."
After 10 years of institution building, Gendler is eager to keep feeding her own voracious curiosity. She plans to spend 2025 on sabbatical in California at Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences where she is hoping to write "a couple of books," and at Stanford's Center for Human Centered Artificial Intelligence where she will have the opportunity to work with scholars and scientists at the forefront of artificial intelligence.
"I expect to return to Yale filled with questions and ideas and ambitions that I will be excited to explore with you," Gendler told members of the FAS in September. "There is no community that I love more than the one we have built here in New Haven, and nowhere I would rather be a scholar and teacher and university citizen."
"Tamar inaugurated this role with brilliance and grace, and I am grateful for her leadership amid a period of unprecedented growth and historic restructuring," said Yale President Maurie McInnis. "I look forward to welcoming her back to Yale as an eminent scholar, devoted teacher, trusted advisor, and influential voice in higher education."