Welcome from the Deans
University of Chicago campus
Dear parents,
We are pleased that your student has chosen the University of Chicago, and we hope that this website provides you with helpful information about the College. Parents and families are important members of the Chicago community. You lend vital support to your son or daughter. We hope that this website will help you understand the opportunities and challenges that your student may face, while offering you information that will be useful to you as your student engages in the intellectual and personal growth that will mark the college years. Please encourage your student to take advantage of all that we offer at the University of Chicago. We welcome any questions or suggestions you would like to share with us.
Sincerely,
John W. Boyer
Dean of the College
Susan M. Art
Dean of Students
John W. Boyer, Dean of the College
John W. Boyer
John W. Boyer, the Martin A. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor in History, was appointed to a fourth term as Dean of the College in 2007. He became Dean of the College in 1992.
During his tenure as Dean of the College, Boyer has strengthened the College curriculum and the College's admissions program, as well as creating the new Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts. Boyer was also deeply involved in the establishment of the University of Chicago Center in Paris. He has worked to create many new programs for College students involving foreign study, internships, and foreign language instruction; to expand student research opportunities; and to strengthen resources for student life.
Boyer has served as Chairman of the Council on Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences since 1986 and as Co-Editor of the Journal of Modern History since 1980. In 1992 and 1993 he was Acting Dean of the Division of Social Sciences.
A specialist in the history of the Habsburg Empire and of Central Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Boyer received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1975 and joined the faculty in the same year. Boyer has written two books, Political Radicalism in Late Imperial Vienna: Origins of the Christian Social Movement, 1848-1897 (for which he was awarded the John Gilmary Shea Prize) and Culture and Political Crisis in Vienna: Christian Socialism in Power, 1897-1918 (for which he was awarded the Ludwig Jedlicka Prize), both published by the University of Chicago Press. Boyer was also co-general editor of the nine-volume University of Chicago Readings in Western Civilization. In 2004 Boyer was awarded the Cross of Honor for Science and Art, First Class, by the Republic of Austria, in recognition of his scholarly work on the history of the Habsburg Empire. He received the 2006 Austrian State Prize for Modern History. He is a Corresponding Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
Boyer regularly teaches European Civilization in the College, and courses on religion and politics in modern European history and on the history of the Habsburg Empire and modern Germany.
Boyer's works in progress include the Austria, 1867-1985 volume for the Oxford History of Modern Europe Series, and a history of the University of Chicago. As part of the second project, he has written a series of eleven monographs on various aspects of the history of the College and the University, most recently extended essays on William Rainey Harper and the founding of the University and on the origins of the Core curriculum in the College in the 1930s.
Susan M. Art, Dean of Students
Susan M. Art
Susan Art became Dean of Students in 2001. She was an undergraduate at Oberlin, and came to the University of Chicago to pursue graduate studies in English. She took a position with the Dean of Student’s office in 1989 after returning from seven years living in England. She has served as an adviser, an assistant and associate dean, and has worked on the office’s scholarship and staff development efforts. Her efforts have ranged from the curricular revisions of 1998, to co-chairing a task force on undergraduate housing (1991), serving on the Provost’s Initiative on Minority Issues steering committee, and on the task force on premed issues (2006).
As dean of students, she heads an office of 25 academic advisers and deans and has overall responsibility for the well-being of all students in the College. The dean of students office works collaboratively with the other areas in the University that deal with College students.