On Wednesday April 24, an email sent to students announced that Dr. Johanna Rossi Wagner will be the next dean of New College West (NCW).
According to the undergraduate academic advising website, the college dean assists upperclassmen in a variety of academic areas, including managing extended absences, changing majors, and dropping courses. According to the Residential College Student Facebook, 475 upperclassmen are members of NCW. NCW’s 399 underclassmen work with residential college assistant deans rather than the college dean.
Dr. Wagner will replace Anne Caswell, who was promoted to Senior Associate Dean of the College in February. Caswell has been at Princeton for decades in several capacities. She served as a professor in the Princeton Writing Program and in the Department of Comparative Literature before transitioning to an administrative role where she rose up the ranks of First College (now NCW) to her new position.
New College West has been around for less than two years, but much of the administration was transferred from the now-demolished First College, including Head of College AnneMarie Luijendijk.
Dr. Wagner came to Princeton as a study abroad advisor in 2019 after nearly nine years working at Penn State, her alma mater. Her most recent position was as the assistant dean for studies in NCW. According to the email, “she has worked closely with first years and sophomore students and served on multiple committees,” during her time in NCW.
Dr. Wagner has worked in education for over twenty years and got her Ph.D. in Italian at Rutgers University.
According to her biography on the NCW website, her “scholarly interests include migration narratives, colonial history and postcolonial literatures.”
The change at the top of NCW aligns with the recent trend of high administrative turnover. Most notably, Dean of the College Jill Dolan is stepping down at the end of this academic year.
Dolan’s departure is only the most recent example of recent high-profile turnover in University administration. Before her, former provost Deborah Prentice moved to the University of Cambridge.
Five Cabinet members have resigned in the past year, which has also seen the departure or planned departure of many administrators focused on student life, including Dean of Undergraduate Students Kathleen Deignan and Deputy Dean of Undergraduate Students Thomas Dunne. Other recent changes include the appointments of Peter Schiffer as Dean for Research and Katie Callow-Wright as executive vice president.
As such, Dr. Wagner will be one of many administrators in new positions next year.
Julian Hartman-Sigall is an associate News editor for the ‘Prince.’ He is from Brooklyn, N.Y. and often covers University administration and student groups.
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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