Yale recently welcomed Janet Ward as a 2022-23 American Council on Education (ACE) Fellow who is spending time on the Yale campus throughout the full academic year. She is affiliated with the Office of International Affairs where she is working with Yale’s leadership on initiatives related to the ongoing Belonging at Yale action plan, with a focus on the humanities and how diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts intersect with the university’s global strategy. 

Yale President Peter Salovey said, “I am delighted Professor Ward will join us at Yale for the ACE leadership program. Through the fellowship, she will gain skills and perspectives that will benefit OU, while also helping to enhance Yale’s operations by sharing ideas based on her extensive experience in higher education.”  

Ward is the Brammer Presidential Professor of History and Faculty Fellow for Strategic Initiatives in the Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences (DFCAS) at the University of Oklahoma (OU), where she has served as founding Faculty Director of the Arts and Humanities Forum and as Senior Associate Vice President for Research and Partnerships. She concludes her term as President of the German Studies Association at the end of this year.  

Ward brings to Yale her expertise as a team-builder for interdisciplinary, community-engaged, and transnational research initiatives. An advocate of higher education’s responsibility toward the public good, she is dedicated to promoting university-wide collaborations that reflect bold intellectual innovation and tangible societal impact across local, regional, national, and global levels. 

Established in 1965, the ACE Fellows Program is designed to strengthen institutional and leadership capacity in American higher education by identifying and preparing faculty and staff for senior positions in college and university administration. The program offers institutions and participants a unique opportunity to learn from one another. Fellows engage in immersive learning experiences with their hosts and build on these experiences on their home campuses, to address new challenges. 

Over the past five decades more than two thousand emerging leaders in higher education have participated in the ACE Fellows program. Forty-six Fellows, nominated by the senior administration of their institutions, comprise the 2022-23 cohort at colleges and universities across the nation.