September 28, 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Dennis O’Shea
dro@jhu.edu
President Ronald J. Daniels sent a broadcast e-mail message to Johns Hopkins University faculty, students and staff on Monday, Sept. 28, announcing the election of Adam Falk, the James B. Knapp Dean of Johns Hopkins’ Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, as the president of Williams College. Here is the text of that message.
Dear Faculty, Staff and Students:
The trustees of Williams College are announcing this evening that they have elected Adam Falk, the James B. Knapp Dean of our Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, as the college’s 17th president.
They have made, as so many of us here at Johns Hopkins will attest, an inspired choice.
Dean Falk is an extraordinary leader, teacher and scholar who has done a spectacular job in the Krieger School. He has added, thoughtfully and strategically, to the excellence of the school’s faculty and academic programs. He has sharpened significantly our focus on the undergraduate experience, inside the classroom and out. He has provided important new opportunities for lifelong learning and career development to nontraditional students in the school’s Advanced Academic Programs. He has imagined, planned and executed important capital projects, not least the stunning renovation of Gilman Hall now under way. And he has worked tirelessly with faculty, staff, alumni volunteers and others to attract to the school the resources that have made possible all these advances.
Adam has been an important part of our community since coming to Johns Hopkins in 1994 as an assistant professor of physics and astronomy. He advanced through the ranks to full professor in just six years, became vice dean of the school’s faculty two years later and interim dean three years after that. He assumed the permanent deanship in 2006.
He has won both the Alumni Association’s Excellence in Teaching Award and National Young Investigator recognition from the National Science Foundation, evidence of that intense devotion to both students and scholarship that our founding president, Daniel Coit Gilman, instilled in us as essential to the soul of this university.
Dean Falk will assume his new position on April 1; there will be time between now and then for all of us to offer him more formal congratulations, thanks and best wishes. But let me say for now, on behalf – I am sure – of the entire Johns Hopkins community, that we are tremendously pleased and excited for you, Adam. As much as we will miss you here, we will be gratified in the knowledge that such a noteworthy and important sister institution is in your capable hands.
More information on Dean Falk’s election can be found at http://www.williams.edu/admin/president/17.
We will move expeditiously to launch a search for the next James B. Knapp Dean of the Krieger School; I will announce details when they are finalized.
Sincerely,
Ronald J. Daniels
