March/April 2009
Alumni Profiles
Nashville Mayor Devotes Himself to His Adopted City
By Laura Butchy ’04 Arts
Nashville Mayor Karl Foster Dean ’78 reads to first-graders at Percy Priest Elementary School in September; he has visited more than 70 schools since taking office. Photo: Photographic Services, Metropolitan Government of NashvilleWhile visiting Columbia in December, Karl Foster Dean ’78 showed his wife and three children around the neighborhood and dined at V&T. The College was an important step in Dean’s lifelong involvement with education, which has included earning a law degree and then teaching law while working for the city of Nashville. Now, as Nashville’s mayor, he works to provide improved educational opportunities to the next generation of students.
“I’m really interested in making schools as good as they can possibly be,” Dean says. “Whether at Gardner H.S. or Columbia or Vanderbilt, I was influenced by all the teachers I had.”
As the sixth mayor of the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, Dean’s first priority is improving local schools. Since winning a run-off election in September 2007, Dean has developed an Education Reform Blueprint and implemented several initiatives to benefit the school system’s 75,000 students.
During his first year in office, Dean hosted town hall meetings to discuss education with teachers, parents and students. He worked with the private sector to raise funds so two teacher recruitment organizations can operate in Nashville starting in 2009–10: Teach for America and The New Teacher Project. Dean included funding in the Metro budget for an Attendance Center to be run by the Juvenile Court, designed to intervene in the cases of truant students. Dean also has begun to create After School Zones that will offer activities for middle school students.
“He’s helped people in the community to focus on some of the immediate needs of the schools,” says Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce president Ralph J. Schulz Jr. “He assesses situations, and by reaching out to the parties affected, he was able to assist the school system.”
The mayor has visited other cities to gather ideas, including a trip to New York last year to talk about education with mayor Michael Bloomberg and schools Chancellor Joel Klein ’67. “I’m anxious to work on issues related to education reform, and New York has played a big part in it,” Dean says.
He was drawn to New York while growing up in Gardner, Mass. Attracted to the city and the College’s academics, he applied only to Columbia. While majoring in political science and minoring in history, Dean was inspired by courses as diverse as an honors political philosophy seminar with Herbert Deane ’42, ’53 GSAS, international affairs with George McGovern and Melville with Ann Douglas.
On campus, Dean played rugby and worked in John Jay Pub, then found an internship with city councilman-at-large from Manhattan Robert Wagner Jr. Dean always had been interested in current affairs, history and politics, and he quickly decided on a career in public service.
Obtaining his law degree at Vanderbilt gave those plans a new focus. “In my law class, it was the old story: I fell in love with a Nashville native,” Dean says. He also fell for Nashville, which he describes as “a vibrant city with a diverse economy, strong healthcare and a music industry that gives it an edge that is different from most major cities.”
Dean began working for the Nashville public defender’s office in 1983, and in 1990, he was elected as public defender. He was reelected twice, then represented the city as Metro Law Director from 1999–2007. He also taught law as an adjunct professor at Vanderbilt, where his wife has taught law for almost two decades after practicing civil and criminal litigation.
“I’ve seen a lot of the government, having spent 16 years working the criminal justice side, and as law director, you get a good idea of how the city works,” Dean says. “I really love the city, and the job of mayor appealed to me because you do things every day that can affect people in a positive way.”
In addition to education, Dean named public safety and economic development as his major priorities, believing the three are inextricably linked. “If you have good schools, kids don’t drop out and it improves public safety,” Dean explains. “And if you have a safe city, it is a place that businesses want to move to and it creates more jobs.”
“Nashville has so many things going for it,” Dean says. “Keeping the city moving forward in a positive direction is something I wanted to do. Nashville is definitely a dynamic city, a city on the rise, and the work really interests me. It’s really an honor to have this position. It’s the best job in the world.”