First Ever Female Dean at Tandon Begins New Role
In a monumental hiring for the historic technical institute, NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering hired its first female dean since the school’s founding, under a different name, in 1854. Hired last spring, Jelena Kovačević is now presiding over her first week of classes as dean.
Kovačević is the first successor to Katepalli Sreenivasan, who served as the president of NYU-Poly during the 2014 merger between NYU and Polytechnic University and as dean when the school was renamed to Tandon in 2015.
“All of us together — students, faculty, staff, board, Brooklyn partners, other NYU schools, alums, friends — form one big puzzle,” Kovačević told WSN. “It will be our collective goal to work on it and build the school into the image we envision.”
Tandon’s faculty members share an optimistic outlook on the new hiring.
“I think that organizations are built around great people and here you have the dean that already has experience starting up a company — we have a great entrepreneurial mindset here at Tandon,” said Ryan Hartman, an assistant professor in the department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. “I think it’s clear that she is a strategic and visionary leader, and her scholarly accomplishments are something to look up to for faculty members.”