Matt Newman

Position
Assistant Dean for Studies
Office Phone
Office
Whitman College
Bio/Description

I am honored to serve as your Assistant Dean for Studies, and I cannot wait to get to know each of you. I am here to help you thrive academically and otherwise at Princeton, particularly during your first two years. I work alongside an amazing team of PAAs, faculty advisers, and Whitman staff to support you as you navigate the mains and straits of college learning and living. Please consider me a resource for anything you might confront at Princeton—even if the question or issue you have falls outside my wheelhouse, I will help you access the appropriate resources. 

I came to Princeton from the Boston area, where I taught in Brandeis University’s Department of Classical Studies and advised high school students (and their families) from all over the world as they took on the college admissions process. Before that, I worked as a research specialist at a digital classics project at UC-Irvine and taught Latin, Ancient Greek, and myth courses, as well as a freshman seminar on "Dread Goddesses in the Ancient Cosmos," at Kalamazoo College in western Michigan. I received my PhD in Classical Studies from the University of Michigan and my BA in Classics from Yale. I grew up in Tampa, Florida. Although I fell headlong in love with so many questions of ancient language, literature, and thought, eventually I focused on poetics of cosmology, gender & sexuality, and psychopathology in early Greek and Near Eastern myth.

With that said, because of my work with college applicants, I have learned so much about the incredible work being done in so many academic fields, and so I hope you’ll share your intellectual passions with me, even if they lie well beyond my ken. In other words, it will be my pleasure to help you chart your intellectual courses toward worlds known and unknown alike. When not in my office, you may find me running (at times swiftly) around Princeton and its environs or searching for a really good burrito. 

In short, then, I am eager to chat with you about what you hope to achieve—and, more importantly, what you hope to experience—while at Princeton, academically, communally, and otherwise. I am utterly delighted—not only for you, but also for Princeton—that you are here, and I can’t wait to serve as one of your guides in this incredible universe!