A native of Utah, Cole has spent nearly all of his adult life in the Garden State. After a completing a bachelor’s degree in English at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah, he moved to New Jersey to attend graduate school at Princeton University, where he completed a Ph.D. in Slavic languages and literatures. His scholarly focus is on Russian and Czech literature, with an emphasis on drama, but it is as an academic administrator that he spends his work days.

Prior to joining the Office of the Provost at Princeton, Cole served as deputy dean of the Graduate School at Princeton and twice served as its acting dean. Previously, he served as associate dean in Princeton’s Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students, a position he moved into after serving as the founding director of studies for Whitman College, one of Princeton’s undergraduate residential colleges. Before joining Whitman College, he served as Allston Burr Senior Tutor and resident dean of Currier House at Harvard University and taught in Harvard’s Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. He has also taught at Rutgers University-Newark and at Bucks County Community College. He lives in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, and enjoys the histories, cultures, arts, and preserved open spaces that abound here.