Diane Lyden Murphy as a faculty member in 1985 (left) and pictured more recently as dean of the Falk College.
Many know Diane Lyden Murphy as dean of the Falk College, a position she has held since 2005. But her journey and impact at Syracuse extend well beyond her deanship. In many ways, her leadership in the Falk College was shaped by the people and experiences in Murphy’s life before Falk College even existed.
As we approach the end of August 2023 and the conclusion of her deanship, we sat down with Murphy to reflect on her personal journey to academia; her calling to social policy, social justice and feminist scholarship; and her remarkable 45 years of service at Syracuse University.
Below is an excerpt of the story that highlights the evolution of the College of Human Services and Health Professions, now the Falk College, under Murphy’s leadership.
Read the full story about Dean Murphy’s legacy on the Falk College website.
In 2001, Syracuse University merged the College for Human Development, the School of Social Work and College of Nursing together to form the new College of Human Services and Health Professions (renamed the College of Human Ecology in 2007), led by Dean William Pollard, former dean of the School of Social Work. The merge raised questions from faculty about the future of their programs. What does it mean for the formerly independent disciplines? How would the programs continue as a collective college? “It was a challenging time,” says Murphy.
In the fragile early years of transition, the University began a search for Pollard’s successor. Although a dozen candidates were vying for the job, Murphy wasn’t one of them. But the University leadership identified her as a strong candidate, thanks to her track record of success in leadership and community organizing. She was heavily recruited. Still, many of the university’s leaders openly expressed their doubts about the ability of the college to succeed. She recalls a conversation with one member of University leadership who said, “If I were you, I would take the job and let it fall to its own because it’s never going to work. Let it fall apart and that’ll be the end of it.”
Even Murphy had her doubts. But taking the job under the assumption of failure was unacceptable to her. She would accept the job under only one vision: that it would succeed. “I remember saying to myself, ‘If I’m going to do this, we’re going to do it! If these schools must be arranged like this, then we’re going to build it so that we can live and thrive in this structure. Otherwise, all the programs will go away.’ And that’s what I said to the committee: We’re going to build this thing.” In 2005, she was selected unanimously by full faculty vote.
For Murphy, failure wasn’t an option. The programs themselves—professional programs in health, nutrition, social work, human development and others—were too vitally important to society in promoting health and equity. “I said to the faculty, ‘We’re going to take this college and make it what we want it to be. What we know it is. But we will do it. We won’t let it fail because our subject matters are too important. We can do this together—and we will do this together.’”
Murphy was the perfect choice to join people together to create a new community. “I was raised in a crowd from the time I was a young person in a large family. I move in a crowd. I never make a decision alone,” she says. “I assume that I have other experts around me—we bounce off ideas, we have discussions and we come to collective work that I think represents the best of everyone. And that’s guided me even to the deanship.”
As the college structure was being formed, so was its identity. With Murphy at the helm, the college was built on the principles of social justice and civic engagement. It became a college where putting theory into practice is about more than just gaining practical experience, but about serving others and fostering humility and understanding in diverse global cultural contexts.
Among the merged colleges was a curriculum for sport management, written by faculty in consumer studies, one of the academic programs that had been newly introduced as part of the merge in 2001. In 2004, the Falk College launched sport management built on the framework of social justice and corporate social responsibility. In many ways, a socially minded business program was ahead of its time. But the students embraced it, and since 2006 they have raised more than half a million dollars for local charities and continue to lead discussions about diversity and equity in sports.
With support from Syracuse University alumni David Falk ’72 and Rhonda Falk ’74, the college was renamed the David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics in 2011. The Falk College Complex, former home of the College of Law, was dedicated 2015. Falk programs which had been dispersed in eight different locations across campus were finally all together under one roof. “It’s 18 years since I became Dean, and we have built it. We are a huge success on every dimension,” Murphy says. “We’ve done it as a collective. We’ve done it as a community.”
Today, the Falk College boasts impactful interdisciplinary faculty research in human services, health and social equity. The curriculum integrates highly effective theory-to-practice learning models for student training. The Falk College created new undergraduate and graduate academic programs in food studies, esports, and sport analytics at Syracuse University, new programs public health from the legacy of the former College of Nursing, and new programs in exercise science which began in the School of Education. Students also benefit from new global study abroad programming across Europe, Asia and Africa.
But most importantly, every year the college graduates a cohort of students who are prepared to make their communities stronger, healthier and more just places. “When students come and study in the Falk College, they’ve already made decisions about what they want to do in their life. They want to be largely involved in improving the lives of others through their professional career. They bring such joy, commitment, eagerness, and innovation. That’s the everyday lift you get from being around Falk students,” Murphy says.
