Sean Decatur
Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences
Hometown
I was born in Cleveland, then moved to Cleveland Heights, where I lived until I went to college. Education
BA, chemistry with honors, Swarthmore College
PhD, chemistry, Stanford University Who is the person who has most influenced you, and how?
My mother. She instilled in me the ethics of hard work and determination, a love of math and science—she is a retired math and science teacher—a love of teaching, and respect for education's overall positive impact. I found other mentors among my colleagues at Mount Holyoke and my teachers at Swarthmore and Stanford. I remember realizing as an undergrad that I could be paid to sit and think. I couldn't imagine a job that would be more fun than that. Before Oberlin
I was the Marilyn Dawson Sarles Professor of
Life Sciences, professor of chemistry, and associate dean of faculty for science at Mount Holyoke.
Why did you want to come to Oberlin?
I love liberal arts colleges, and I have known for a long time that Oberlin is an interesting and engaging place. And coming back to northeast Ohio was attractive because my wife, Renee Romano, who will be teaching in the history department, and I have family here. Why did you want to move into administration?
I value the type of education that happens at Oberlin, and I want to make it work. I found that the same general process that occurs in research, breaking down a big project into smaller pieces, applies to being a dean and helping an institution along in its goals. What are your priorities as dean?
Helping to facilitate a dialogue about the possibilities for and the future direction of Oberlin's curriculum, and finding ways to support the excellence of our faculty and students and their outstanding scholarship. Supporting the synergy of teaching and research is important to me and to the institution. I will ensure that every student who wants a research experience, in any discipline, gets one. For the long term, I want to internally strengthen the institution so that decades from now we will have maintained or increased our standing among the nation's best liberal art colleges. Will you be teaching in 2008-09?
No. But I'm setting up a lab to continue the research I've been doing on protein folding—how proteins function and develop, and how their malfunctions are linked to diseases like Alzheimer's. What has surprised you about Oberlin?
I knew about the milestones in Oberlin's rich history before I was hired, but it's wonderful to learn specifics about the free thinking people who have lived here. For instance, I didn't know about the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue before I came here. I'm also enjoying the human scale of Oberlin. My family and I can walk and bike just about everywhere, run into neighbors and chat, and experience all the wonderful Midwestern things I've missed since leaving Cleveland.
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