Over the summer, the University announced the appointments of Peter Struck as the Stephen A. Levin Family Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw as the inaugural faculty director of the Arthur Ross Gallery, and Brigitte Weinsteiger as the director of the Penn Libraries.
Struck, the Vartan Gregorian Professor of the Humanities in the Department of Classical Studies, assumed the role of dean of the College on August 1, succeeding Paul Sniegowski, who left the position to serve as president of Earlham College in Indiana. Struck was among the first Arts & Sciences faculty members to engage in online instruction, and his Greek and Roman Mythology class on Coursera has enrolled almost 250,000 students. He’s earned Penn’s Lindback Award, the School of Arts & Sciences Dean’s Award for Innovation in Teaching, and the College of General Studies Distinguished Teaching Award. Struck also served as the director of the Benjamin Franklin Scholars (BFS) from 2009 to 2023, enhancing the program by creating the Integrated Studies first-year curriculum for BFS students and helping turn it into a residential program in which first-year students live together.
Shaw, the Class of 1940 Bicentennial Term Professor in the Department of Art History began as the Arthur Ross Gallery’s faculty director on June 1. She has taught at Penn for almost 20 years and is also an experienced curator. She served as acting chief curator at the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution and has been the faculty curator of shows at the Arthur Ross Gallery, the ICA, and the Penn Museum. In a statement, Shaw said her goal is to “foster creativity and critical thinking, providing a platform for individual expression and a welcoming space for collective learning.”
Weinsteiger began in June as the H. Carton Rogers III Vice Provost and director of the Penn Libraries, where she leads a system that includes 19 physical libraries. She’s worked for Penn Libraries for the past 16 years, having overseen 11 departmental libraries across campus, including the Fisher Fine Arts Library and the Holman Biotech Commons. “I see my role as a library leader to connect vision, patterns, resources, and strategy,” said Weinsteiger, who will oversee the Libraries’ $30 million budget, 10 million print and digital volumes, 350,000 journals, and abundant collection of digital resources. “Libraries are not just about books or buildings; they are also about people.”
