The Role of Dean
The Dean is the chief academic officer of Pauli Murray College and a faculty member in Yale College. Residing within the college, she serves as the primary academic adviser to the students of Pauli Murray College; assists students in planning their courses of study and academic programs within the broader context of their Yale careers; and applies and enforces academic and undergraduate regulations and procedures. The Dean also oversees the First-Year Counselors and coordinates the College Advisers for first-year students. She teaches in Yale College, serves on a range of University committees, and with the Head of College, plans and participates in many college activities.
Dean Heidi Stalla
Dean Stalla earned a Bachelor of Arts in Classics, with Honors, from Stanford University. She then earned a Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy in English Literature from the University of Oxford. She is an internationally recognized scholar and writer who studies modernist, postcolonial, Bloomsbury, and Asian literary studies, with particular attention in these contexts to the writings of Virginia Woolf and the field of twentieth century life-writing. She publishes literary criticism, creative nonfiction and audio essays. She has written a monograph about Virginia Woolf and Life-Writing, has an affiliation with the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing, and is currently working on an object-biography of modernist writer Ling Shu Hua’s Friendship Scroll.
Dean Stalla also has extensive experience building and directing writing programs at two start-up international liberal arts colleges: NYU Abu Dhabi and Yale-NUS in Singapore, where she is currently an Assistant Professor of Literature and Creative Writing. At Yale-NUS in Singapore, she helped build an innovative Writers’ Centre that played a central role at the College, collaborating with departments across and beyond campus to host orientation activities, experiential learning workshops, writing festivals, and symposia. As a Residential College Fellow, Dean Stalla lived on campus and hosted informal and semi-formal meals, events, and discussion groups for students. Together with other faculty fellows and residential staff, she also organized outings and invited artists and speakers to present at Rector’s Teas while school was in session. Last year, she served on, then recently became chair of the Committee of Academic Standards, working with the Dean of Faculty and the College Assistant Deans to provide advice on policies related to the Yale-NUS Undergraduate Regulations and to consider petitions and appeals from students for exceptions to these policies.
Dean Stalla loves to travel. She has lived internationally most of her life, in Jordan, Oman, Sri Lanka, Italy, England, Abu Dhabi and, for the past nine years, Singapore. She also loves sports—she has coached tennis throughout her life, and while at Stanford was part of the 1997 NCAA championship tennis team. More recently she has been working on her Yoga Teacher Certification, working on ways to bring together movement, mindfulness, and creative writing practices. Joining Dean Stalla are her five-year-old twins, Quinn and Ella, their two-year old dog, Clio, and 10-month-old cat, Nico.