College Dean Appointment

To: Members of the University Community  
From: President Paul Alivisatos and Provost Katherine Baicker
Subject: College Dean Appointment
Date: April 12, 2023

We are pleased to announce that Melina E. Hale, PhD’98, William Rainey Harper Professor in the Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy and the College and a vice provost of the University, will be the next dean of the University of Chicago College, effective July 1, 2023.

Melina’s commitment to a liberal arts education, renowned research and scholarship, and history of academic leadership make her exceptionally qualified to advance the College into the future, while stewarding our legacy of providing a transformative educational experience for our students. She has been a member of the University faculty since 2002 and her deep knowledge of the University, proven ability to navigate complex situations, and skill at forming collaborative partnerships across campus will be instrumental assets to her success in this role.

As dean, Melina will oversee a strategic vision for the College’s next chapter. She will play a crucial role in upholding and advancing the University’s and the College’s fundamental values, including our deep commitment to fostering a thriving intellectual culture that values freedom of expression. Melina will champion our dedication to rigorous inquiry and to developing in our students the habits of mind and character instilled by our core curriculum and a liberal arts education. She will steward and help to renew the legacy of the College as a vital common project of our entire faculty from across the University. Melina will seek ways to enrich the student experience in and out of the classroom, and to build on our many innovative career programs. She will help us to deepen our lifetime partnership with students as they look beyond the College at the next steps in their careers and personal journeys.  

Melina has led many key initiatives to advance the research and educational mission of the University. She has provided support and guidance to academic centers and institutes as vice provost, including the Library, the University of Chicago Press, the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society, the Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation, the Institute on the Formation of Knowledge, and the Center for Radical Innovation for Social Change, among others. She has led many institutional projects for the Office of the Provost including chairing a task force that recommended creative ways of enhancing undergraduate education in STEM fields. With appreciation for the value of the University’s emeriti faculty, she has worked to increase institutional engagement among them and developed new resources to support their community. She has also led many campus-wide initiatives related to administrative system improvements, budget modernization, and environmental research and sustainability.  

A distinguished neuroscientist with strong interest in biomechanics, Melina has maintained an expansive research portfolio throughout her career. Her scholarship focuses on the neural control of movement, and she collaborates with engineers to explore biological models that inform the design of engineered underwater propulsion systems. In recognition of the quality of her work, Melina has been named a National Academies/Howard Hughes Medical Institute education fellow, a fellow of the Institute for Defense Analysis, and a National Science Foundation CAREER award recipient. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and recently completed a two-year term as president of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology.

On campus, Melina’s contributions to teaching and mentoring are well recognized. She is the recipient of the University’s Wayne C. Booth Graduate Student Prize for Excellence in Teaching and the Faculty Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching and Mentoring. Melina is a member of the Committee on Neurobiology and the Committee on Computational Neuroscience at the University, and she served as co-interim director of the Marine Biological Laboratory. Her first service as a faculty member was on the College Council and she has also served on the Council of the University Senate, including as spokesperson for the Committee of the Council of the University Senate, and on the Board of the UChicago Laboratory Schools. Melina was also a dean for faculty affairs in the Biological Sciences Division, among other divisional responsibilities. She holds a PhD in organismal biology and anatomy from UChicago and a BS in zoology from Duke University. Before joining the University faculty, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Melina will succeed John W. Boyer, the Martin A. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor of History, who has served as dean of the College for more than 30 years. As announced last year, John will transition to the role of senior advisor to the president at the end of the academic year and will continue teaching in the College.

We are grateful to the members of the College Deanship Advisory Committee, chaired by Gabriel Lear, for their thoughtful work and feedback throughout the search process. Please join us in congratulating Melina on her appointment and thanking John for his remarkable leadership as dean.