2018 Commencement Speaker Announced
Newark Academy is pleased to announce the 2018 Commencement speaker – Dr. Thomas Carew, the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at New York University. He will deliver the keynote address during Commencement exercises on Sunday, June 10, 2018. Dean Carew is a neurobiologist who has done extensive original research on memory during a lengthy career that has included teaching posts at Yale University, Columbia University, the University of California at Irvine, and N.Y.U. He is a distinguished teacher, researcher, and educational leader whose research interests center on the behavioral, cellular, and molecular analyses of learning and memory, and information processing in identified neuronal networks.
Biography
Thomas J. Carew has served as the Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science at NYU since July 2011. He was previously the Bren Professor and Chair of the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at the University of California, Irvine, where he also served as Chair of the Task Force on Undergraduate Education, and as a member of the system-wide Commission on Undergraduate Education. He has also held leadership roles at Yale University and Columbia University.
Thomas J. Carew has served as the Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science at NYU since July 2011. He was previously the Bren Professor and Chair of the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at the University of California, Irvine, where he also served as Chair of the Task Force on Undergraduate Education, and as a member of the system-wide Commission on Undergraduate Education. He has also held leadership roles at Yale University and Columbia University.
During his tenure as Dean, he has placed a high priority on the fostering of broader diversity, equity, and inclusion at the faculty, student, and staff levels. Consistent with these goals, he has led a team that developed a faculty hiring toolkit, focusing attention on diversifying the pool of applicants and hiring more diverse faculty. This toolkit has now been utilized with great success by Arts and Science and other schools at NYU. He has also spearheaded the creation of fellowships and scholarships, research programs, and conferences to provide students from underrepresented or underserved backgrounds with inclusive opportunities for learning and advancement in their chosen fields.
A renowned scholar and the author of over 190 scholarly articles and three books, he has focused his research on the behavioral, cellular, and molecular analyses of learning and memory. Among his many honors are the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) MERIT Award, an NIMH Career Development Award, Yale’s Dylan Hixon Prize for Excellence in Teaching in the Natural Sciences, and the Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award at the University of California, Irvine. He is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and served as President of the Society for Neuroscience in 2008.
Dean Carew earned a B.A. from Loyola University, an MA in physiological psychology from California State College, and his Ph.D. in physiological psychology from the University of California, Riverside. He also received an honorary MA from Yale University in 1984.
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