Dean of Columbia College

The Dean of Columbia College is the highest-ranking official in Columbia College and is the head of the administration for the College.

The College is a sub-unit of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. As such, the Dean reports to the Vice President for Arts and Sciences, who in turn reports to the Provost. The Dean of Columbia College therefore has more limited powers than his or her counterpart, the Dean of SEAS.

The current Dean of Columbia College is James Valentini, who took over as the sixteenth Dean of Columbia College in 2011, after Michele Moody-Adams resigned. Dean Valentini is also the Vice-President for Undergraduate Student Life and is a full member of the University Senate as well as the Columbia College Alumni Association.

History of the Deanship

For most of Columbia's first century of existence, Columbia the institution and Columbia the undergraduate school were one and the same, and so the President of Columbia was necessarily (and, really, only) the head of an undergraduate liberal arts college. That began to change during the tenure of President Frederick A. P. Barnard, which saw the opening of the School of Mines, the School of Architecture, the conversion of the College's 'law department' in to the School of Law, and the foundation of a Graduate School. Columbia became a university in all but name, with the undergraduate college (styled as the "School of Letters and Science" beginning in 1865-1866, and later the "School of Arts") being just one division. The restyling of the undergraduate liberal arts college as the "School of Letters and Science" coincided with the appointment of John Howard Van Amringe, then only an Adjunct Professor of Mathematics, as the "Secretary of the Faculty of Arts" in the 1865-1866 school year. In 1879-1880 Van Amringe became the Secretary of the Board of the College, a body consisting the the President of Columbia University, and all professors in a "sub-graduate" course of instruction with the power to try student offences, determine student standing, adjudge awards and punishments, and prescribing a course of study.

The office of "Dean of the School of Arts" was established for the first time in 1890. Professor Henry Drisler was elected the first dean. John Howard Van Amringe, typically credited as the first dean of Columbia College, and who had already served as acting dean in 1890 while Drisler was on a leave of absence, and had taken up the post of Secretary of the College in 1892-1893, was elected his successor in 1894.

List of Deans of Columbia College

• John Howard Van Amringe
• Frederick Paul Keppel
• Herbert E. Hawkes
• Harry J. Carman
• Lawrence H. Chamberlain
• John Gorham Palfrey
• David B. Truman
• Carl Hovde
• Peter Pouncey
• Arnold Collery
• Robert Pollack
• Jack Greenberg
• Steven Marcus
• Austin E. Quigley
• Michele M. Moody-Adams
• James Valentini

List of Acting Deans

• James Valentini
• Robert Belknap