Grad Takes Academic Helm as Yale Provost

ACADEMIC MEDICINE: Hockfield, a neuroanatomist, is the first faculty member from Yale’s medical school to be named provost of the Ivy League institution.

Perhaps a background in neuroanatomy has given Susan Hockfield ’73 special insight into students’ and administrators’ brains.

Regardless, her success in her positions at Yale University, first as a member of the medical school faculty in 1985, then graduate school dean in 1998, paved the way for her latest appointment: provost of the university.

As the chief academic and administrative officer next to the president, Hockfield will oversee all educational policies and academic plans for the college, graduate school, 10 professional schools, and a number of research centers. She will also develop Yale’s operating and capital budgets.

Hockfield, who earned her Ph.D. in anatomy from Georgetown University School of Medicine, was the first member of Yale’s medical school faculty to be named graduate school dean and the first to become provost.

“It is an honor to serve this great university as provost. It would be an extraordinary privilege in any era, but it is particularly exciting during our current period of dramatic renewal and rejuvenation,” Hockfield says.

The appointment bodes well for Hockfield’s future as well. Her predecessor, Alison Richard, has taken the post of vice chancellor of Cambridge University, making her the third female Yale provost who has gone on to head a major university.