Two New House Deans
With the appointment of Dr. Annabelle Pelta to Gregory College House
and Amy R. Pollock to Hill College House, the College House deanships are
at full strength. "We were tremendously lucky to get our top candidates
in both searches," said Dr. David B. Brownlee, Director of College
Houses and Academic Services.
Dr. Pelta is a scholar of art history who took her B.A. from Temple in 1978 and A.M. and Ph.D. degrees from Penn in 1981 and 1992. At Penn she held a Dean's Fellowship, a Penfield Travel Award and L'Aquila Research Grant for research in Italy, and a prestigious Mellon Doctoral Fellowship. From 1985 to 1989, Dr. Pelta served as Director of the Italian Studies Summer Institute in Florence, a program co-sponsored by Penn's College of General Studies and Bryn Mawr College. She then became a patron services representative for the Philadelphia Orchestra Association, and most recently was with the Music Preparatory Division at Temple's Esther Boyer College of Music, where she designed and managed the registration databases and was responsible for student registration, placement, scheduling, and billing, as well as program development, scholarships, and grant-writing. Since Gregory House is home to the Modern Languages Program, Dr. Pelta's foreign language skills will be welcomed, Dr. Brownlee's announcement said. She is fluent in Italian and has reading knowledge of French, German, Spanish and Latin.
Amy Pollock holds a B.A. in behavioral and neural biology from Lehigh
(1989) and an M.A. in student personnel administration from the Teachers
College of Columbia (1990). While studying toward her Ph.D., she has been
working with students in many capacities at Ramapo College in Mahwah, NJ,
where she has been an adjunct professor in the School of Theoretical and
Applied Sciences as well as assistant director of residence life. At Ramapo
she helped to develop and implement a comprehensive student residential
program; supervised residences including apartment complexes and a first-year
dormitory; and, since 1992, served as Ramapo's director of student development.
She is known for creating leadership opportunities for students through
special training initiatives, peer education, service learning, and club
and organization participation. One of her special projects was a co-curricular
transcript program that enabled students to establish official records of
their achievements outside the classroom, and she was involved in campus-wide
health education initiatives, judicial affairs, and community relations.
Since 1997 she had also served as program director of the Study Abroad Program
in London during the winter session, providing curricular support for participants.
Almanac, Vol. 45, No. 20, February 16, 1999