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Daniel H. Weiss, dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at The Johns Hopkins University, has been named 16th president of Lafayette College.
The announcement was made by Alan R. Griffith ’64, chair of Lafayette’s Board of Trustees. Weiss will assume the Lafayette presidency July 1. He succeeds Arthur J. Rothkopf ’55, who announced his retirement on January 31 and will conclude his service as president at the end of the current academic year after serving in the position since 1993.
“Daniel Weiss’ highly effective service as dean and other experience in both academia and the private sector clearly qualify him to lead Lafayette at this important point in the College’s history. I am extremely pleased that he will be Lafayette’s next president,” Griffith said.
“As the remarkably successful administration of Arthur Rothkopf concludes, Lafayette is a college on the rise, well positioned to achieve its ambitious goals and aspirations. I am confident that with Daniel Weiss as president Lafayette will sustain and strategically accelerate its momentum as one of the nation’s premier undergraduate institutions,” Griffith continued.
Weiss said, “Lafayette is an exceptional institution that has benefited from able and visionary leadership, stable operating budgets and growing endowments, a compelling and well-grounded strategic vision, an exceptional campus and physical plant, and most important, a healthy and vital community committed to the college’s success. I have great respect for the quality of the institution and its people, and I believe that I can make a meaningful contribution in moving Lafayette forward to new levels of excellence.”
Weiss has served as James B. Knapp Dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins since 2002. His responsibilities include oversight of all departments and faculty, graduate and undergraduate academic programs, scholarly and scientific research, budget and financial operations, strategic planning, development and alumni affairs, office of housing and student life, admissions, and enrollment services.
The Krieger School encompasses full and part-time programs at Johns Hopkins’ Homewood campus in Baltimore as well as facilities in Washington, D.C., and Florence, Italy. It includes 2,900 undergraduates, 1,000 full-time graduate students, 1,500 part-time graduate students, and 300 full-time faculty in 23 departments and has an endowment in excess of $300 million.
A leading authority on the art of medieval Europe in the Age of the Crusades, Weiss is also a professor of art history in the Krieger School. A member of the Johns Hopkins faculty since 1993, he served as art history department chair from 1998 to 2001 and served as the Krieger School’s dean of the faculty in 2001-02.
Before becoming dean Weiss played a key role in the development and adoption, in 2001, of a new strategic plan for the Krieger School, and as dean he has led the plan’s implementation, including a $250 million capital campaign targeted to improving faculty competitiveness, building endowment for student scholarships, investing in infrastructure, and funding new programs and academic initiatives.
Under Weiss’ direction, the school has strengthened undergraduate education by developing more integrated and vibrant academic programs, created a more comprehensive community environment, and improved facilities dedicated to the needs of undergraduates.
Weiss has led the forging of stronger connections between the Krieger School and other divisions of Johns Hopkins, including a public health major directed in partnership with the Bloomberg School of Public Health, government programs in partnership with the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, and numerous collaborations with the Whiting School of Engineering, Peabody Conservatory of Music, and other divisions.
The school has also developed new interdisciplinary programs, including new centers in the areas of East Asian studies, Africana studies, and Jewish studies, all supported by newly raised endowments.
Weiss earned a master’s in art history at Johns Hopkins in 1982 and a Ph.D. in art history, also at Johns Hopkins, in 1992. He earned his undergraduate degree, with majors in art history and psychology, from George Washington University.
In 1985 he earned an MBA, with a concentration in nonprofit management, from Yale School of Management, and worked for the next four years for the global consulting firm of Booz, Allen & Hamilton.
Weiss is author of numerous articles and four books on the art of the Middle Ages. His published work focuses on Romanesque, Gothic, and Crusader art, as well as the interaction of Byzantine culture with the Medieval West. He has also published articles on documentary photographs of the Second World War and the Holocaust and has lectured at many colleges, universities, and museums in the United States and abroad. His research has been supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Harvard University, Yale University, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, and the Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo.
In 1994 he won the Van Courtlandt Elliott Prize, awarded annually by the Medieval Academy of America for a first article in the field of medieval studies, becoming one of the first art historians to win that award. He is the recipient of three Johns Hopkins awards for teaching excellence, the George Owen Teaching Award, Johns Hopkins Alumni Association Excellence in Teaching Award, and Distinguished Faculty Award.
Weiss is a member of the boards of directors of Johns Hopkins’ Walters Art Museum and Shriver Hall Concert Series and a trustee of The Park School of Baltimore.
Weiss, 47, is married to Sandra Jarva Weiss, a health-care attorney who is a partner in the Baltimore office of the law firm Piper Rudnick LLP. They are the parents of two sons, Teddy, 8, and Joel, 5.