Linda M. Lemiesz has served as Dean of Students at The Cooper Union since 1992.    She oversees the Office of Student Services, which includes the Student Residence, The Center for Career Development, Financial Aid, and Athletics and Recreation.    She serves ex officio on the Academic Standards Committees of all three schools and is a member of the President’s Leadership Team.     

After receiving her bachelor’s degree in English and Comparative Literature at Smith College, Linda Lemiesz was awarded a doctoral fellowship to attend Columbia University where she enrolled in the program in Comparative Literature with specialization in Renaissance and classical literature.   Active in graduate student rights issues, she was appointed by the University to serve as the graduate student representative to the Senate Committee charged with creating the university’s first policy prohibiting sexual harassment. When Columbia College began admitting female students for the first time in 1983, she was appointed an academic advisor.  She began working on issues of institutional diversity while working on a revised core curriculum as Assistant Director of College Composition. Shortly before defending her dissertation in 1987, she was appointed as Assistant Dean of Student Affairs at the School of Engineering and Applied Science; among her assignments were planning a diversity awareness program that would be part of the First Year Orientation Program, improving services for graduate students, and expanding institutional wide programs for international students.   She served on the University’s Library, Bookstore, Residence Life, Student Enterprises and Affirmative Action committees and on the Task Force on Sexual Violence.

In 1992, Dr. Lemiesz’s interest in issues of access to higher education and social justice led her to The Cooper Union, whose charter was one of the first in the United States to prohibit racial and ethnic discrimination and whose policy of awarding all students a full-tuition scholarship was one she admired.   She was charged with the task of opening Cooper Union’s first Student Residence, reorganizing the Student Government, expanding club activities, and bringing other policies into compliance with federal guidelines.  She has served as chair of the Subcommittee on Student Life (1993-5), chair of the Menschel Fellowship Committee, member of the Academic and Administrative Councils, and has overseen production of the Campus Safety Report. For her work in Student Affairs, she has won a Fulbright fellowship for International Administrators and has participated in the Oxford Roundtable and in the Wye Faculty Seminar of the Aspen Institute. As a member of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators, she has reviewed programs for the national conventions since 2006 and has published articles in Leadership Exchange and and More Stories of Inspiration.

A 2007 graduate of the New York Law School, Dr. Lemiesz has also won prizes for her legal writing in the areas of labor and employment and higher education law and is admitted to practice in New York State.