Yale School of Architecture has a new dean today, as the university has announced that New York-based architect Deborah Berke will be the next dean to rule the concrete and paprika halls. The founder of Deborah Berke Partners will start in her new position effective July 1, 2016.

Berke has been an adjunct professor at Yale since 1987 and will be the first woman to lead the School of Architecture. She received a B.F.A. and a B.Arch. from the Rhode Island School of Design as well as an honorary doctor of fine arts from the school. She holds an M.U.P. in urban design from the City University of New York. She succeeds the ever-colorful Robert A.M. Stern, dean since 1998.

“As a practicing architect and a long-time faculty member in the School of Architecture, Professor Berke is ideally positioned to lead it toward a successful future as it begins its second century,” said Yale president Peter Salovey in a statement. “For more than 30 years, she has dedicated her career — in equal measures — to education and practice. She has taught architectural design using disciplinary approaches both integral to and less commonly associated with the world of architecture. This perspective, in her own words, helps students to understand they are part of a larger cultural conversation.”

Berke is the co-editor, with Steven Harris, of The Architecture of the Everyday. In 2008, Yale University Press published Deborah Berke, a book focused on the firm’s work, which was also the first book on a contemporary American architect to be published by Yale Press. A new book on her firm’s work will be published by Rizzoli in 2016.