Alison Coleman

Alison Coleman is a writer, instructor, editor, and university administrator who has served at Yale in a variety of capacities since 2007. In the English department, she has created multidisciplinary writing seminars on topics ranging from awe to food studies to unplugging, served as a tutor for “Daily Themes,” and taught for the First-Year Scholars at Yale summer program. Her pedagogical approach emphasizes deceleration and immersive inquiry, and her current independent research and writing is focused on the habits of mind and daily practices of artists, scholars, and other social contributors.

As the course coordinator for the DeVane Lectures in fall 2026, Coleman is working alongside Dean of Yale College Pericles Lewis and the cohort of graduate teaching fellows to deliver Lewis’s “Purposes of College Education” course, open to undergraduates and to the wider community. Her other university responsibilities include oversight of Yale College Class Day, authorship of Yale’s accreditation reporting to the New England Commission of Higher Education, and leading workshops on writing, editing, pedagogy, and communications strategy for academic departments, faculty and staff members, and student groups. She is a fellow of Ezra Stiles College, an adviser for the Eli Whitney Students Program, and a faculty partner in the Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning’s Pedagogical Partners program. She serves on the Writing Center Advisory Committee and the Yale Committee for the Marshall, Rhodes, and Henry Scholarships; is a member of the Yale University Art Gallery’s Museum Pedagogy Lab; and was part of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ Humanities Instructional Faculty Working Group. In 2023 she received the Fred Strebeigh and Linda Peterson Prize for Excellence in Teaching by a member of the English instructional faculty, and in 2026 she was recognized by Yale College with the Richard H. Brodhead ’68 Prize for Teaching Excellence.

Prior to her arrival at Yale in 2007, Coleman began her career as a journalist at The Miami Herald, reporting on local news, editing and designing copy throughout the newspaper, and contributing as a writer and editor to feature sections including “Tropical Life” and the Herald’s design magazine. She received her bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University and pursued doctoral study at the University of Miami, Florida. She is always happy to chat about books, tennis, travel, or her extensive collection of hot sauces.

updated August 2026