Resident Dean To Depart Cabot

Stephen H. Kargère, Cabot House’s beloved Allston-Burr resident dean, will step down at of the start of the year, House Master Jay Harris announced in an e-mail Tuesday night.

Though a historian by training, Kargère said that he will become the assistant dean of academic affairs for the sciences, where he will be responsible for academic planning in the sciences and will advise department chairs.

Kargère—who will continue to live in Cabot for the remainder of the year and help with the transition to his replacement—will be leaving his post after five-and-a-half years, a typical term for a resident dean.

“It’s been fantastic getting to know so many amazing students,” Kargère said in an interview. He added that he would miss “the sense of community [in Cabot]—the feeling that everybody knows everybody.”

“He really has been an awesome resident dean,” Harris said to The Crimson, “He’s been an amazing person to have here. We will obviously miss him.”

Students said they would remember Kargère for his wit, humor, and accessibility.

“He’s fantastic—everybody here really loves him,” Cabot resident Samuel C. Brondfield ’08 said. “He’s just a really nice guy.”

In the time Kargère has been at Cabot, he said that the House has seen through at least two student-focused initiatives.

Following a controversy over the holiday season several years ago, Kargère pushed for the celebration of Festivus, the Seinfeld-inspired multi-cultural celebratory event that uses an aluminum pole in the place of a Christmas tree. The House also transformed a largely unused underground space into “one of the nicest weight rooms” in the House system, he said.

Luciana Herman, an expository writing preceptor and a resident tutor in Quincy House, has been tapped to serve as the acting resident dean, according to Harris. A search will be conducted to find a permanent replacement for Kargère, he added.

“I am so excited to move to the Quad,” Herman said, noting that it has “a sense of community that is really tight.”

She added that she “explicitly took the job saying that I’m not a disciplinarian,” and that she would like to spend her time working on behalf of students.

“If there’s a word that describes my ethos, it’s ‘advocacy,’” Herman said. “I’m there on the side of the students.”

—Staff writer Aditi Balakrishna can be reached at balakris@fas.harvard.edu.