Provost Claude Steele to Become Stanford Education Dean
After two years at Columbia as University provost, Claude Steele is returning to Stanford University, where he will become dean of its School of Education. A noted social psychologist, Steele came to Morningside Heights in May 2009 from Stanford, where he served as a professor of psychology from 1991 to 2009 and led the psychology department as chair from 1997 to 2000.
Steele has conducted a wide range of research, examining such issues as self-identity, group stereotypes and addictive behaviors. He described the decision to leave Columbia as perhaps the most difficult of his career.
In an email to the University community, Steele said he loved his job here. “It is a fascinating, challenging and constantly stimulating experience to be the provost of a great research university, especially one that is thriving on so many important fronts.” However, he added, “life doesn’t always go as planned. The decision to accept the Stanford offer came down to a difficult-to-pass-up opportunity to play a role in the field of education.”
As a scholar, Steele has sought to understand the processes that drive educational achievement. In his new role, he is looking forward to developing the implications of that work in the area of education policy and practice.
“It is an important time to be rejoining that vital mission,” he said. “Nothing less than this rare opportunity to do so at such a strong school of education could have lured me away from my current position at Columbia.”
University President Lee C. Bollinger wished Steele well. “Though personally saddened by Claude’s decision to return to Stanford, I completely understand this life choice,” he said in the same email announcing Steele’s departure. “Given Claude’s great talents and the importance of the issues he wants to explore and resolve, this is clearly a benefit to society, while it is equally a loss for us at Columbia.”
Steele is noted for developing the concept of “stereotype threat” which, he says, is “simply being in a situation where a negative stereotype about one of your identities could apply. Then you know you could be judged or treated in terms of that stereotype.”
His book on the subject, Whistling Vivaldi, and Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us, was published in 2010 and uses reallife examples and the results of many scientific experiments to illustrate this theory, making the crucial point that stereotype threat is not limited to race. It can be seen in situations involving gender, age and other examples of group identity. “All of my research, in some way or another, bears on the value of diversity in participation in American society,” Steele told The Record in October 2009.
“It’s an incredibly important life mission of mine and part of my character. I’m always wending my way toward a support for that, and for facilitating that in American society. Full participation—that’s what I think of when I think of the idea of diversity. And among the Ivies, Columbia, I am proud to say, has the most diverse student body of all of them.”
—by John Uhl