Sweet Briar College Magazine - Fall 2018

ON THE QUAD
Rainville, Yochum Appointed
Dean & Associate Dean
sbc.edu
Dean Lynn Rainville
Sweet Briar President Meredith Woo announced this summer
that the new dean of the College would be a familiar face:
Lynn Rainville.
Since taking over as acting dean in March, Rainville has
been exercising financial and administrative oversight of the
library, sponsored research, institutional effectiveness, the
Honors Program and study abroad. More recently, Rainville
also steered the “complex work of curricular realignment,”
Woo said. “She has been actively involved in faculty recruitment
and promoting excellence in research and teaching. As
historian, archaeologist and anthropologist, she will continue
to champion the centrality of the humanities and social sciences
in the liberal arts education at Sweet Briar. This mission
builds on her decade of public outreach as the director of the
Tusculum Institute, dedicated to local history and historic
preservation.”
Rainville has been a member of the Sweet Briar community
since 2001. After receiving her Ph.D. from the University of
Michigan in Near Eastern archaeology and spending more
than a decade directing projects in Turkey and Syria, she
has spent the past 17 years uncovering Virginia’s forgotten
histories, including research into African-American cemeteries,
enslaved communities, segregated schools, town poor
farms and the role Virginians played in World War I. Her
grant-funded work has appeared in four books and more than
two dozen articles. Rainville frequently shares her research
through lectures, online databases and social media.
“It is rare to find a scholar who can bridge this gap between
the academy and the public,” Woo wrote in a letter to the
community. “Her research demonstrates the importance of
the humanities in designing research to connect our shared
history to our common future.”
Engineering professor Hank Yochum is supporting Rainville
in his new capacity as associate dean. Yochum has been
a member of the Sweet Briar community since 2002. He
has taught courses in engineering and physics and led the
Margaret Jones Wyllie ’45 Engineering Program since 2007.
Yochum earned his Ph.D. in physics at Wake Forest University
and his B.S. at the College of Charleston. His research is
in photonics and nano-engineering, most recently focusing on
developing new processes to fabricate polymer-based optical
devices.
As director of the engineering program, Yochum led the first
accreditation review, which resulted in Sweet Briar becoming
one of only two women’s colleges in the country with an
ABET-accredited engineering program. Part of his work
included developing assessments of learning outcomes so
that faculty members can ensure students gain the skills and
knowledge to be successful and identify areas for improvement.
Together with program faculty, he founded Explore
Engineering, a series of spring, fall and summer courses that
has brought more than 500 high school women to campus to
create compelling, hands-on engineering projects.
Yochum has served as chair of the faculty senate and the
Personnel Committee. An advocate for undergraduate
research, he served as the director of the Honors Summer
Research Program and was an elected councilor for the physics
and astronomy division of the Council of Undergraduate
Research (CUR). As associate dean, Yochum’s duties include
being the point person for the Honors Program and institutional
assessment. While he remains involved with the engineering
program, Bethany Brinkman took over as director.
Associate Dean Hank Yochum works with participants at Explore
Engineering
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