As Dean of First Year Students and, for the College of Arts and Sciences, Director of Academic Advising, Janet Tighe, is responsible for helping undergraduate students adapt to the academic life at Penn. Her duties include overseeing first year advising, coordinating academic support services for students taking College of Arts and Sciences courses and working with all university partners who support undergraduates. She has won several awards for her teaching, including the 1999 Provost’s Award and the 2004 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching. Tighe holds a B.A from Johns Hopkins University and a Ph.D. in American Civilizations from the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Tighe was one of the founding co-directors of the popular SAS interdisciplinary program, Health and Societies. Her research and teaching focuses on modern America ’s cultural investment in scientific medicine, and its interaction with the law and capitalism. She has worked with several contemporary policy institutes, exploring the development of forensic psychiatry and the insanity defense, the expanding role of the medical expert and the evolution of medical education and accreditation institutions. Her publications include a frequently used teaching text, Major Problems in the History of American Medicine and Public Health, co-edited with John H. Warner of Yale University.