Dean Newman (or Dean Matt) serves as the residential college dean in Silliman and plans to teach in the Classics department. He has come to Yale from Princeton, where he served as the assistant dean for studies in Whitman College. Originally from Tampa, FL, Dean Matt earned his B.A. in Classics (Latin) from Yale and his Ph.D. in Classical Studies from the University of Michigan. His scholarly interests include everything from bilingual funerary inscriptions (the topic of his Yale senior thesis) to ancient Greek and Near Eastern literature and thought to the “ritual psychology” of college admissions.
At Princeton, Dean Matt helped students launch (and then coached) the Princeton Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl team and organized a summer running club for students on campus. Before Princeton, Dean Matt worked as a college admissions consultant, taught Latin, ancient Greek, and various myth courses at Brandeis University and Kalamazoo College, and worked on the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae at UC-Irvine, a nigh-exhaustive digital corpus of ancient (and later) Greek literature.
Dean Matt enjoys running, watching movies (especially from the 80s and 90s), playing contract bridge, and discovering niche perfumes.
Dean Matt lives in Silliman with his partner, Nicole Rodriguez, who is an expert in progressive economic policy, and their two handsome animals, Bernard the cat and Charlie the dog.