Jeanne Marsh, the School of Social Service Administration’s (SSA) George Herbert Jones professor and acting dean for the past year, accepted a five-year term as dean of the school beginning July 1. She formerly served as the dean from 1988 to 1998. Marsh turned down a deanship at the University of California at Berkeley to accept the post.

“The opportunities for this school to address its mission—the development of knowledge and talent to serve society’s most vulnerable individuals and groups and communities…to be an even more important part of the University, the city, the country, in terms of providing leadership—has never been greater,” Marsh said, adding that it felt “very exciting” to be returning to the deanship.

Marsh said she left the deanship in 1998 because she had finished her second term, explaining that deans at the University typically serve for fixed five-year terms, often serving two terms consecutively.

While she said that she doubted that she will ever return to her all-time favorite job: working as a school social worker with high school students and their families—”because of the way careers develop,” Marsh said that she still enjoys working directly with people, both in volunteer positions and in her research. Her favorite part of being SSA’s dean, she said, is working with the SSA’s “just phenomenal” graduate students. She aspires to “not diminish the idealism [with which the students often come in] but to provide our students with the capacity to better pursue their idealistic goals.” She is still driven by the same “idealistic motivation,” she said, that first drew her to social work: “to make the world a better place… to provide service and assistance to people who were disadvantaged.” Time and experience, she said, have not crushed that idealism.

The University also appointed Edward Snyder to a second term as dean of the Graduate School of Business beginning July 1, 2006.