Four finalists have been announced for the position of dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
Provost Russell Russell L. Moore announced Wednesday that the finalists for the position of dean of the College of Arts and Sciences are Paul Beale, CU-Boulder; Antonio Cepeda-Benito, Texas A&M University; Jeffrey Cox, CU-Boulder; and Steven Leigh, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, according to a university news release.
Todd Gleeson, the current dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, will complete his 10th year in the position at the end of June. After announcing his resignation last August, he will return as a faculty member in the Department of Integrative Physiology, according to the news release.
The position is to be filled by July 1, according to the news release. The finalists will partake in further interviews in late February and March.
Provost Russell L. Moore, said in a statement that he is confident in the quality of the chosen finalists to succeed the current dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
“I am grateful to the committee and its chair, Dean John Stevenson, for arriving at four quality candidates to lead CU-Boulder’s largest college,” Moore said in a news release. “I am looking forward to interviewing the candidates at their campus visits, and to hearing their individual visions and ideas for taking our outstanding College of Arts and Sciences to new levels of success.”
The future dean of the College of Arts and Sciences will oversee the university’s largest school, according to the news release, with 19,295 undergraduate and graduate students, 1,982 faculty and staff and a general fund budget of $133.5 million.
John Stevenson, dean of the Graduate School and chair of the search committee, said that there were a number of exceptional candidates, making the committee’s search for a new dean for the college difficult.
“The search committee was gratified by the quality of the candidates who applied,” Stevenson said in the news release. “Initially, we received over 100 applications, which I believe underscores the desirability of CU-Boulder as a national destination for talented faculty, students and administrators. After intensive deliberations the committee came to consensus on the four candidates.”
The committee narrowed down the search to four finalists, whose backgrounds are as follows, according to the news release:
Paul Beale is currently a professor and chair of the Department of Physics at CU-Boulder, whose field of research is theoretical condensed matter physics and statistical mechanics. Beale earned a B.S. in physics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1977 and a Ph.D. in physics from Cornell University in 1982. He worked as a postdoctoral research associate in the department of theoretical physics at Oxford University from 1982 to 1984 when he joined the CU physics faculty.
Antonio Cepeda-Benito, a professor of psychology and dean of faculties and associate provost at Texas A&M University, has research areas of specialization in behavioral and cellular neuroscience and clinical psychology. He earned a B.A. in psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1988, a M.S. in psychology from Purdue University in 1991 and a Ph.D. from Purdue University in 1994. Cepeda-Benito was associate dean of faculties at Texas A&M University before becoming associate provost and has been a faculty member of the university since 1994.
Above, Associate Vice Chancellor for Faculty Affairs Jeffrey Cox speaks at a November 2010 public forum. Cox is one of four finalists for the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences position. (CU Independent File/Lee Pruitt)
Jeffrey Cox is a CU-Boulder professor of English literature and the associate vice chancellor for faculty affairs. He earned a B.A. from Wesleyan University in 1975 and a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in 1981, also serving as part of the faculty of Texas A&M from 1981 to 1998. Cox served as director for the Center of Humanities and the Arts at CU from 1998 to 2006 and specializes in English and European Romantic literature, cultural theory and cultural studies.
Steven Leigh currently serves as an associate dean for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has been on the faculty at the University of Illinois since 1994 and also holding positions as part of the faculty of the State University of New York, Stony Brook, and at Northwestern University. In 1980, he received his B.A. in anthropology from Northwestern University, an M.A. in anthropology from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in 1985 and his Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 1992. He is a biological anthropologist with a research focus on the evolution of primate life histories, with special attention to human life history evolution.
Contact CU Independent Breaking News Editor Nora Keating at Nora.keating@colorado.edu.
