Dean O'Keefe To Head for Wellesley

Assistant Dean of the College and Secretary of the Administrative Board John T. O’Keefe has revealed his plans to step down at the end of the month to assume a dean-level post at Wellesley College.

As Secretary of the Ad Board, O’Keefe managed its affairs and provided, alongside Allston Burr senior tutors or assistant freshman deans, consultation for students with cases or requests brought before the board.

Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 said the search for a new secretary of the Ad Board is underway. But he declined to comment on whether a new assistant dean would be appointed to fill O’Keefe’s shoes or whether the responsibilities of his former post would fall under the auspices of two new associate deanships that were created earlier this year.

Those two posts have not yet been filled, although Deputy Dean of the College Patricia O’Brien said last spring that she hopes to fill them by the end of the summer.

O’Keefe, who was appointed assistant dean in 2001, is one of the last remaining University Hall administrators who predates the controversial 2003 restructuring that saw former dean Harry R. Lewis ’68 ousted from the College’s top post. But O’Keefe said that his departure is not the result of any political tensions but rather a choice to take on new responsibilities in a new environment.

“Wellesley has offered me a great chance to build on what I’ve done here and move into some new areas for me, and it’s an opportunity that I’m very excited about taking,” O’Keefe wrote in an email. At Wellesley, he will become the director of advising and academic support services and a class dean.

O’Keefe, who was senior tutor of Dunster House from 2000 to 2002, said he is enthusiastic about returning to take on a similar role at Wellesley.

“The job includes being a class dean (their equivalent of a senior tutor) for about 300 students, and I’m excited to have a chance for a lot of direct student contact again, as I did in Dunster House,” he wrote.

O’Keefe, who is also a lecturer in history and literature at Harvard, said that while he will not teach for his first few years at Wellesley, he does hope to return eventually to the classroom.

“I may teach after a year or two there, but not right away,” he wrote. “But someday I would like to encounter students in the classroom again.”

Gross wrote that O’Keefe’s departure should not affect the schedule of the Ad Board this fall.

“He told me that he was applying for this job [at Wellesley] some time ago. We…hope to have someone in place by the end of the summer,” Gross wrote in an e-mail. “John will work with his successor to insure a smooth transition.”

Even though he will be moving from a co-educational environment to a single-sex school, O’Keefe wrote that, after meeting several Wellesley students, he does not expect the transition to be difficult.

“[The Wellesley students] seemed to me to be very much like our students here,” he wrote. “Mostly, they seemed to want access to a good education in a supportive environment, which is certainly a goal we could all get behind.”

—Staff writer Joshua P. Rogers can be reached at jprogers@fas.harvard.edu.