feniYou may have heard that SEAS is  bringing in an outsider, Feniosky Peña-Mora, to be its next dean. This may bring a tide of change for the oft-forgotten school on the windiest corner of campus, which has been governed for the last two years by a fatigued physics professor.

Certainly, in his last email, PrezBo assured us he’s qualified, but will he fit in?  The New York Times caught wind of it and, wide-eyed, spilled the beans on this mysterious figure.

First, we ensure that he is a proper engineer.  At the age of 7, he used Popsicle sticks to bridge his sister’s Barbie world with his own.  “Feni” then grew up to work on the Big Dig in Boston.  Real-world impact?  Check.

Second, we verify that he has some donor-pleasing personality quirk.  The Gray Lady informs us that when naming his children Feni “employed an algorithm that factored in such characteristics as the parents’ and grandparents’ names, the children’s birth weights and the months of their conception and birth.”  Offspring who will never forgive him?  Check.

Last, PrezBo loves him.  Always eloquent, he mumbled something to the Times reporter about “upward trajectories” before saying, “He [Peña-Mora] came to the last meeting with a PowerPoint presentation.”  Bureaucratic conformity?  Check.

Welcome to SEAS, Feni.  We’re pretty excited.  You know, for Columbia.

—AB