Staff Directory

Primary Responsibilities: Graduate Teaching, Professional Development, Strategic Initiatives

Pamela Schirmeister joined the Graduate School in 1999, and serves as Deputy Dean & Dean of Strategic Initiatives for The Graduate School, and the FAS Dean’s office and as Dean of Undergraduate Education at Yale College. She works on academic and administrative initiatives at the intersection of the College, the Graduate School and the FAS and on undergraduate curricular issues.

Dean Schirmeister’s academic training is in nineteenth-century American literature. Her research interests also include the relation between philosophy and literature, psychoanalytic theory, and biography, and she has published several books and many articles in these areas. She received from Yale both her B.A. (BK) and Ph.D. in English and has taught courses in Yale College in English, Comparative Literature and the Humanities. Before returning to Yale, Schirmeister worked as a reporter for Time magazine and taught at Middlebury, NYU and at University of Konstanz, where she is also a member of the International Advisory Board.

John Alvaro assumed the new role of Associate Dean for the Biological and Biomedical Sciences (BBS) Program as of June 1. In this role he will support students, faculty, and staff in the doctoral programs affiliated with the Combined Program in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences. In addition, he will develop systems to assist in securing grant and fellowship funding. John completed an undergraduate degree in biology at Johns Hopkins, a Ph.D. in neuroscience at Yale, and a postdoc at the Yale School of Medicine.

Primary Responsibilities: Admissions, Graduate Program Review, Fellowships (NSF and Fulbright)

Robert Harper-Mangels has served as assistant dean of the Graduate School since 2006. Effective July 1, Assistant Dean Robert Harper-Mangels will become Associate Dean for Admissions and Financial Support. In this new position, Rob will continue to support the Graduate Program Reviews, conduct data analyses, and work with departments on admissions. He will have a greater role in overseeing STEM program funding and will act as liaison to other offices to align decisions about programs with university priorities. In addition, he will assume primary responsibility for overseeing student fellowships and external funding applications. Rob has a bachelor’s degree in music and psychology from Wesleyan University, and a PhD in Neuroscience and Behavior from University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He looks forward to the challenges ahead and is eager to continue working with DGSs, Registrars, students, and administrative colleagues in this new capacity.

Primary Responsibilities: GPR, DGSs, Alumni Liaison, IvyPlus & International Exchanges, Special Projects

Jasmina Besirevic Regan joined the Graduate School in 2016, and serves as Associate Dean. She is responsible for designing and implementing strategic projects aimed at strengthening and supporting our graduate programs. Working with the Graduate School’s Graduate Program Review team, she also helps to identify areas of growth and opportunity within our graduate programs. She works closely with the academic affairs team and with graduate programs across the divisions to provide review and support at the programmatic level. She advises graduate programs on curricular and structural issues, the development and implementation of school and program policies, student exchanges and international initiatives, and the admissions process for degree-granting programs.

Dean Besirevic’s academic training is in the sociology of genocide. Her teaching and research interests also include ethnic conflict, identity, nationalism, human rights, and refugee resettlement. She received her B.A. in Sociology from Augsburg College in Minneapolis, and her Ph.D. in Sociology from Yale having also earned the Master’s degrees there. She has taught courses in Yale College in Sociology, Global Affairs, and Ethnicity, Race, and Migration. She has presented papers on the sociology of genocide at a number of professional meetings, and has been invited to speak at international conferences both at Yale and abroad. Before joining the Graduate School academic affairs team, she served as the Dean of Trumbull College, one of fourteen residential colleges at Yale, for twelve years.

Sarah Insley joined the Graduate School in 2022 as assistant dean for graduate education. In this role, Sarah assists in developing co-curricular academic initiatives offered to graduate students and departments. Her portfolio includes internships, IvyPlus and international exchange programs, symposia and colloquia funding, summer opportunities, and accessibility recommendations.

Sarah's academic training focused on the language and literature of the Greek-speaking world in late antiquity and the early Byzantine Empire. She earned her PhD in Byzantine Greek from the Department of the Classics at Harvard University and her BA in Greek and Latin and in Medieval Studies from the Catholic University of America. Prior to coming to Yale, she held an ACLS New Faculty Fellowship in the Department of Classics at Brown and a College Fellowship at Harvard, in which roles she taught undergraduate and graduate courses in late antique and Byzantine literature and cultural history. From 2015-2022, she served as Dean of Branford College at Yale and concurrently taught courses in the Department of Classics.

Primary Responsibilities:
• Academic Advising & Student Progress
• Disciplinary & Grievance Cases
• External Fellowships

Matthew Tanico, GRD ’17, came to GSAS after serving as the Associate Director of the Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration (RITM). At RITM, Matthew worked to advance innovative teaching and research on key topics of historical and contemporary importance. He began his career as an Academic Administration Fellow in the Graduate School Dean’s office in 2017 while completing his doctoral degree. After graduating, he taught in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese at New York University and worked in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean’s office as a Project Specialist to build the inaugural “Scholars as Leaders; Scholars as Learners” suite of faculty development opportunities. Matthew earned a B.A. in Spanish and Italian from New York University and holds a Ph.D. in Spanish and Renaissance Studies from GSAS, where his academic research focused on Golden Age Spanish literature and its relation to material culture and technology.

Primary Responsibilities: Graduate Student Status; English Language Proficiency Compliance; Responsible Conduct of Research; Student Registration; Summer Internships; Fellowships; Colloquia/Symposia; Graduate Student Leave Requests

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