BEIRUT: Lebanese architect Amale Andraos has been appointed as the new dean of the Graduate School of Architecture, Preservation and Planning at Columbia University in New York City. Andraos, who has been teaching at Columbia since 2011, is the first woman to become a dean at the school, according to the statement released by the university Tuesday. Before Columbia, she taught at Princeton, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania in the U.S., and at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon.

 

“The university is very focused on global questions and global issues, and Amale’s background sort of bespeaks globalization,” Lee Bollinger, the university president, said in an interview with the New York Times. “It’s not a theory or buzz word, it’s who she is, and that’s very important.” [Link]