Posted on May 1, 1994

Linda Evers Cool


Linda Evers Cool, associate academic vice president at Marist College, has been named the College's new vice president for academic affairs and dean of faculty.



She will take office July 1, succeeding James E. Underwood, who will return to the Political Science faculty after a year's sabbatical.



President Roger Hull, announcing the appointment, said, “Linda Cool joins Union as we enter our Bicentennial year. She will play a decisive role as we refine our distinctive blend of liberal arts and engineering, of undergraduate research and international experience for the twenty-first century and our third century of service.”



Cool earned her B.A from Bryn Mawr College and her Ph.D. from Duke University, both in anthropology.



Reporting to her at Union will be the academic deans, including the dean of engineering; the Academic Opportunity Program; athletics; computer services; educational studies; graduate and con­tinuing studies; the Graduate Management Institute; international programs; the registrar; Schaffer Library; and the writing center and instructional technology office.



Before joining Marist, Cool held teaching posts at Santa Clara University and Vassar College.



Her teaching and research interests include cultural anthropology, psycho­logical anthropology, ethnicity, human development and aging, the history of family structure, sociolinguistics, European immigration to the U.S., and Western Europe and the Mediterranean culture areas.



She has received research fellow­ships and awards from the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and an award for teaching excellence at Santa Clara University.



She has published articles in a num­ber of scholarly journals, including the International Journal of Aging and Human Development, Anthropological Quarterly, and the Journal of Social History, and has contributed a number of chapters to anthologies and text­books. In addition, she regularly has presented papers at national and inter­national conferences.



She is a fellow of the American Anthropological Association and a mem­ber of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Association for Higher Education, the Eastern Association of College Deans, the Gerontological Society, the New York Academy of Sciences, and the Society for the Anthropology of Europe. She was co-founder and past president of the Association for Anthropology and Gerontology and has served the National Science Foundation both as a panelist and chair of evaluation panels in the annual NSF Fellowship competition.



During one of her get-acquainted vis­its to campus, Cool said, “I have come to respect the importance of the inter­face between the traditional liberal arts and the more professional academic areas, like engineering. I am convinced that the exciting new ideas in higher education are going to arrive from a synergy between these areas. An insti­tution like Union, with its strong liberal arts and engineering programs, is going to find itself in the forefront of everything interesting in higher educa­tion if we can find ways to make these connections happen.”