Hamilton College Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculty Suzanne Keen has appointed Professor Penny Yee as the next associate dean of faculty effective July 1. She will replace Associate Dean and Professor of Literature Onno Oerlemans, who will resume teaching full time in the Literature and Creative Writing Department after a year’s sabbatical.
Yee, who holds the James L. Ferguson Chair in psychology, served as associate dean of faculty from 2013 to 2018, when the role emphasized curriculum. For her upcoming three-year term, Yee will bring her considerable expertise in advising to the collaborative work of developing faculty connections to the integrated advising project, ALEX (Advise, Learn and EXperience). In the future, every Hamilton College student will have both a faculty advisor and an ALEX advisor, who will provide resources for study skills, internships, study abroad, community-based learning, cocurricular and extracurricular experiential learning, and career and vocational exploration.
“I am delighted Professor Yee has agreed to return to Buttrick Hall, where she will support departments and programs in the social sciences and humanities,” Keen said. “Penny’s expertise in student advising will be especially beneficial as Hamilton welcomes a soon-to-be-hired administrative dean of engaged education to lead the ALEX effort. Who better to coordinate the faculty’s role in an augmented advising system than a person with Penny’s expertise?”
Yee served previously at Hamilton on the Advising Assessment Committee and was a 2018-19 fellow at the University of Washington focused on best practices in advising. She will bring the knowledge she gained at Washington to the coordination of faculty engagement with ALEX, working in tandem with the new administrative dean of engaged education. Yee’s fellowship year was sponsored by the American Council on Education to help prepare future leaders in higher education.
The recipient of a bachelor’s degree from Pomona College, Yee earned a master’s degree and Ph.D. in human experimental psychology from the University of Oregon. She joined the Hamilton faculty in 1991.
Yee’s research focuses on the areas of cognition and individual differences, with a particular interest in how we manage distractions in handling daily activities. Her articles have been published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, Cognitive Psychology, Memory and Cognition, Intelligence, and the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Among her many accomplishments, Yee has twice been the recipient of the Hamilton College Class of 1963 Faculty Fellowship (2004 and 2013) and in 1993 was a co-recipient of a National Science Foundation grant to establish a Center for Cognitive Study at Hamilton.
