Meet the Dean

On June 1, Meredith Woo stepped into her new role as dean of the University of Virginia College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. She joins the College from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where she was a professor of political science and served as associate dean for social sciences in the College of Literature, Science and the Arts. Prior to moving to Michigan in 2001, she taught at Northwestern University, where she helped rebuild the department of political science and co-founded the Center for International and Comparative Studies. She also has taught at Colgate and Columbia Universities.

A native of Seoul, Dean Woo is well known around the world for her expertise in international political economy and East Asian politics. A prolific writer and researcher, she also was the executive producer of a documentary about Stalin’s ethnic cleansing during the Great Terror—a film named “best documentary” by the National Film Board of Canada last year.

In 1996, President Bill Clinton appointed her to the Presidential Commission on U.S.-Pacific Trade and Investment Policy. She has consulted for the World Bank, the United States Trade Representative, Asian Development Bank Institute, the Asia Foundation and The MacArthur Foundation.

Dean Woo received her B.A. at Bowdoin College (English Literature and History) and two M.A.s (International Affairs and Latin American Studies) and a Ph.D. (Political Science) from Columbia University.

Many on the search committee discussed your ability to work across the sciences, social sciences, humanities and the arts. How might looking beyond the boundaries of disciplines and departments be evidenced under your leadership?

The existing disciplinary boundaries are artifacts of a particular historical time and place. They are not set in stone but are more like lines drawn in shifting sands—there to be crossed all the time by innovative scholars. Part of my task will be to do some hard and creative thinking about how these boundaries might be redrawn or recombined in light of the challenges shared by higher education and the world today and how best to come up with the tools and ideas to meet such challenges. One way to do this is to encourage a contentious plurality of perspectives and to draw upon people from diverse backgrounds and experiences so that we can field the best ideas and solutions to meet these common challenges.

You’ve talked about looking to the past, to the future, inward and outward as an institution. Could you elaborate on those perspectives, what we will learn and what actions we will take?

The past is always prologue for the future, but at this University, one of the first truly American universities with a nonpareil founding by Thomas Jefferson, the past is ever-present. Luckily, Jefferson’s legacy is entirely forward-looking, a legacy that rings true today and always will: that the remedy for society’s defects and for individual ignorance is “to inform their [and our] discretion by education.” Education, in turn, is the best guarantee of a well-functioning civil society and democracy. His legacy is, therefore, a fine guide for the future. Not all universities are blessed with such a gold-plated telos, but this one is.

As for looking inward, I was referring to the great complexity of the College—one of the few truly great comprehensive colleges in the country. I come from the University of Michigan which, like Virginia’s Arts & Sciences, has a large, complex and comprehensive college. So I have some appreciation of the magnitude of the complexity and daunting nature of the tasks here. By understanding and enhancing the internal workings and strengths of this multivariate place, we can then look outward to the world, to help our students understand the opportunities that exist and take full advantage of them.

What do you feel are the College’s greatest needs?

Resources, resources, resources. The College is a public entity that provides the best education money can buy—but not with the resources that private universities have. To maintain some of the world’s finest faculty and to enhance academic programs in the face of steep competition from private universities with bottomless pockets and massive endowments, and to provide a great education to the sons and daughters of the Commonwealth and elsewhere, is a daunting challenge that is not going to go away. The only way to meet it, and to do better, is with greatly enhanced financial resources.

What are your short-term goals for the College? Your long-term goals?

Given my answers above regarding the greatest needs and challenges for the College, you can imagine that I will be fully involved with augmenting the resources of the College. The goal is always academic excellence, without which a university has nothing, but with such stiff competition we need new and manifold resources to stay abreast and move ahead. So in the short and the long term, we always keep an eye firmly fixed on maintaining and developing the excellence of the College so that it remains one of the best places in the country for undergraduate education and a world leader in generating knowledge.

You’ve spoken about coming to the United States and entering academia as a foreign student 30 years ago. How does that affect how you see your job? How you see the world?

Being a foreign student at a good small college, and one of the early women at this former men’s college, was an education in itself and a kind of revelation to me of how much one can learn about the world in a free atmosphere of give-and-take, how much self-discovery can take place in a few short years. Thirty years ago I was truly one of the few; today foreign students or students of immigrant parents are a ubiquitous presence on American campuses—and all by themselves they have internationalized American education.

You’ve stated that the Commonwealth of Virginia is more diverse in every way than ever before. You also said that both the College’s constituency and its responsibility is the world. Can you please elaborate?

When we talk about “internationalization,” or “globalization” in the curriculum, we think it is something far afield, something about the rest of the world. But we need not look far. The Commonwealth is increasingly diverse and increasingly a site for new immigrants who are often well educated—and always want the best education for their children. Northern Virginia today is as diverse as any suburban or exurban place in the country. This is a tremendous asset for the University, but it requires that we understand and serve this new constituency, along with the loyal alums and other folks who have long been devoted to Virginia.