Ben Temple, educator, mentor, and leader, will succeed Jeff Domina, Instructor in English, as the Dean of Faculty. Temple is currently the Head of Upper School at Francis Parker School in San Diego, California, and has worked in a number of private institutions across New England. Temple’s role as Dean of Faculty will become effective in July 2025.
Historically, the Dean of Faculty position has rotated among existing faculty over periods of six years. Beginning this year, however, the role has shifted to accepting candidates from outside of Andover to allow for greater engagement and impact.
Merilee Mardon, Deputy Head of School told Andover Magazine, “Ben [Temple] is a thoughtful leader and strategic thinker, who was drawn to Andover because of our core values and our intentionally diverse community.”
She continued, “I am confident in his ability to learn about Andover’s complex systems and to work with all of us to continue to improve the ways we care for our students. Ben brings many strengths to this role—perhaps most importantly, his deep experience as an educator, his empathy, and his demonstrated ability to navigate complicated ecosystems.”
As an incoming faculty member, Temple is excited to learn more about his colleagues and the student community. Temple explained how his professional experience and career culminated in him applying for Dean of Faculty.
“The role of Dean of Faculty is really unique and was a special one for me in thinking about my own professional journey. A lot of my work as a division head over the last ten years has been focused on faculty growth, faculty development, and frankly helping the outstanding teachers who work in our schools to be at their best. That work’s been really inspiring for me professionally. Also, candidly as a family, it’s a place that I’m very excited about. [I’m excited] about my kids getting to know the school and becoming part of the community in ways that are appropriate for them,” said Temple.
Having studied in a boarding school himself, Temple views the role as a unique opportunity to understand relationships between faculty and students.
“I grew up on a boarding school campus, and so the student experience is really central to what my career has been about the last ten years. At [Francis Parker School], a lot of my work has been focused on faculty development, but it has rooted me into a foundation and a love of classroom experience, coaching, [and] the dorm. I’m really looking forward to [being] involved in all those ways at Andover, because that’s really what this is about, why we as educators do this work, and candidly, it’s part of the joy, at least that I anticipate, about joining the community,” said Temple.
Temple noted how taking the time to understand the community is crucial to developing successful initiatives that will benefit faculty and students alike.
“There’s been things I’ve done in my previous schools that have worked well, but the success of those initiatives is rooted entirely in how appropriate they are for the community, so there’s not any sort of off-the-shelf idea that I have that I’m going to bring forward. I want to get to know my colleagues, I want to get to know the students and build that base of knowledge so that when there is a challenge or we need to move in a certain direction, I hope I’ll be as well informed as I can be to build the solution that’s right for Andover,” said Temple.
Going into the role, Temple detailed his primary focus of adjusting to Andover’s ecosystem. Temple plans to connect with more people in the community through involvement with athletic events, performances, and other aspects of campus culture.
“To me, it’s really important that I am known and that I know folks on campus, students, faculty, and staff. A lot of what I see as a challenge very early on is getting to know people and being at athletic events, performances, things that are happening on campus. That’s going to take time for people to get to know me and for me to get to know everybody in the community. I don’t see that as a challenge so much as a focus for me as I think about coming into the role,” said Temple.
