Q & A with Dean William Gaudelli
Dr. William Gaudelli talks about his priorities as dean and the challenges facing today’s educators and human service professionals. In late July, William Gaudelli, former chair of the department of arts and humanities at Teachers College, Columbia University, began his new role as dean of Lehigh’s College of Education. In a wide-ranging interview in his office in Iacocca Hall on the Mountaintop campus, Gaudelli talked about his priorities as dean and the challenges facing today’s educators and human service professionals.
Q: In shaping educators and human service professionals of the future, what is your vision for the College of Education?
I want to see the College come together and decide as a group what it wants to work on. We’re obviously going to be dedicated to serving professionals in their work and preparing them for the positions they will occupy. That’s always front and center in the College of Education, whether it’s in human services or education. It’s our core work. In addition to that, it’s trying to think about new ways to engage people in learning that is timely, flexible and fluid, that responds to the needs that exist within professions. That’s obviously a very important piece of what we will be working on. But in terms of the particulars, I’m going to leave that to the faculty to co-construct.
We have ongoing commitments that we’ll honor in terms of working with young people who have autism. That’s crucial work. Special ed students in the Centennial School. Again, critical work…. Those commitments I want to honor and continue.
While doing all this, we want to build a research profile—essentially to continue a robust research and grow new lines of research—and support the growth of the College in terms of the ability to contribute to research and raise the profile of the institution vis-a-vis research so that we become a go-to place for certain areas of knowledge. I want to continue to contribute in ways that are quite meaningful, like we have done in school psychology, like we have done in autism and special education and other fields, and increase our productivity and make it reach into new venues. That’s an important piece.
Under Lehigh’s Path to Prominence initiative, I intend to grow the College, to grow the faculty lines as well and to expand the footprint of the College.