CAMPUS BRIEFS: Thursday, November 5, 1998

Gregory House dean announces resignation Citing a need to devote more time to his doctoral dissertation, Gregory House Dean David Shengold resigned from his post yesterday, becoming the second house dean to leave the system this semester. Hill House Dean Tracy Feld announced her decision on October 1. Shengold, 39, is a doctoral candidate in Slavic languages and literature at the University of California at Berkeley and used to teach at Williams and Mount Holyoke colleges in Massachusetts. He said he ultimately realized it was not feasible to balance his time between the job and his dissertation. "I was hoping I could come here and do that while working as a house dean," he said in an interview. "But it is necessary for me to concentrate on the writing." According to Gregory House Faculty Master Robert Lucid, Berkeley officials gave Shengold a "sudden-death deadline" for his dissertation, prompting his decision to resign his post. Lucid, an English professor, emphasized his fellow staff member's positive contribution to the house. "This guy has been a terrific operations officer, a terrific colleague for me and a terrific friend," Lucid said. Like Feld, Shengold will stay on at Gregory until the end of the semester, a point he stressed in an e-mail sent to all residents of Gregory, the house made up of the Van Pelt and Modern Languages college houses. But while several sources said Feld might have resigned due to frustrations with the college house bureaucracy, Shengold emphasized that no such problems factored into his decision. "I want to make clear that the decision was my own and is in no way a reflection on Gregory House? nor on our excellent staff," he said in the e-mail. Lucid said the house is beginning to look for a successor to Shengold, explaining that he is "hoping to find one as good as him." -- Jeremy Reiss