This September I will be starting my sixteenth full year as the Dean of Butler, and I am as excited as ever at the prospect of getting to know all the new members of the Butler community -- especially our new Class of 2025 residents, as well as the members of the Class of 2024 moving onto campus for the first time. To tell you a little about myself -- I was born and raised in New Hampshire, and spent my undergraduate years at Columbia University, where I fell in love with New York City. I worked at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts for over two decades, and studied film and photography there. I earned my Ph.D. from the American Studies Program at Yale, where my dissertation focused on the design of Central Park and nineteenth-century visual culture.   Other academic interests include U.S. social and cultural history, photography, landscape architecture, and Russian and Soviet-era film.   At Princeton, I have taught courses in the Freshman Seminar Program and the Princeton Writing Program, and I also enjoy serving as an Academic-Athletic Fellow for the Princeton golf program.   In my spare time I volunteer building and maintaining local hiking trails with the D&R Greenway organization.     I am also a big fan of wilderness trips and American roots music.    I'm married to the wonderful Peggy Wreen, who currently serves as Managing Director at Symphony Space, a non-profit performing arts center on Manhattan's Upper West Side. We reside in Princeton, a short walk from campus.