Gales Stokes named as humanities dean

CONTACT: Ellen Chang
PHONE:
(713) 348-6777
EMAIL: ellenc@rice.edu

GALE STOKES NAMED AS
HUMANITIES DEAN

Gale Stokes, the Mary
Gibbs Jones Professor of History, has been named dean of the School of
Humanities.

Stokes has served as
interim dean for the past year after Judith Brown left in May 2000 to become the
vice president for academic affairs and provost at Wesleyan University.

“I am delighted that
Gale Stokes has agreed to serve as Rice Humanities dean,” said Eugene H. Levy,
provost and professor of physics and astronomy. “Working with him this past
year, I have constantly been gratified and impressed by Gale’s knowledge of
Rice, by his insight and his decisiveness, as well as by his management,
leadership and interpersonal skills and humanity.”

He said he is eager to
continue working on many of the goals he began last year as interim dean,
including restructuring the kinesiology department and transforming the language
lecturers program.

Stokes said he chose to
stay on as dean of the humanities school in part so that he could complete the
relocation of all the humanities departments. The renovation of Rayzor Hall is
almost completed and is scheduled to be finished during the Christmas holidays.
Initial plans are being made for renovating Sewall Hall.

“It’s an interesting and
time consuming project,” he said.

He’s also looking
forward to restoring the main task of the language departments to the study of
literature and culture in addition to language instruction.

Stokes has been at Rice
since 1968 and received his doctorate from Indiana University, where he earned
the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Russian and East European Institute in
1995. Stokes has authored 40
articles and eight books, most recently “The West Transformed” (1999) with
Warren Hollister and Sears McGee. The recipient of numerous awards and grants
over the years, Stokes has been honored three times with the George R. Brown
Award for Superior Teaching at Rice.