Rev. Dr. Pamela Cooper-White has been installed as Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. The installation was a part of Union’s 183rd Convocation, held September 4.
Cooper-White is the Christiane Brooks Johnson Professor of Psychology & Religion and has been at Union since 2015. She assumed her new role on July 1, after Dr. Mary Boys stepped down from the role and returned full-time to her faculty position as Skinner & McAlpin Professor of Practical Theology.
“It is a great privilege to follow in the legacy of the distinguished deans of Union Seminary. I look forward to taking up this new role of equipping and empowering students, faculty, and staff as we work together to build on Union’s historic record of academic excellence,” said Cooper-White.
With an illustrious and diverse career, Cooper-White has been lauded with national and international awards and fellowships. Most recently she was the Fulbright-Freud Visiting Scholar of Psychoanalysis at the Sigmund Freud Museum and the University of Vienna, Austria. She earned a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School, a Ph.D. from Harvard, a Master of Arts in Pastoral Counseling from Holy Names University, and a Ph.D. in Pastoral Counseling and Clinical Social Work from the Institute for Clinical Social work.
President Serene Jones said of Cooper-White at Convocation, “We know her as a person of deep compassion, of quick and brilliant intelligence, of constant drive, of warm and sincere openness, and a questing heart, only to be matched by the questing mind that she brings to this space.”
As leader of the faculty, Cooper-White will further the educational mission of Union. “I am looking forward to joining with the Union community, including its alumni/ae and many friends, in keeping Union on the cutting edge of theological education in the service of social justice,” added Cooper-White.