Finalists announced for College of Arts and Sciences dean
The finalists for the position are Paul Beale, CU-Boulder; Antonio Cepeda-Benito, Texas A&M University; Jeffrey Cox, CU-Boulder; and Steven Leigh, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne, according to John Stevenson, dean of the Graduate School and chair of the search committee.
“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. “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.”
Stevenson said the committee’s task of arriving at four finalists was a challenge, given the size and quality of the pool of applicants for the post.
“The search committee was gratified by the quality of the candidates who applied. 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,” Stevenson said. “After intensive deliberations the committee came to consensus on the four candidates.”
The College of Arts and Sciences is CU-Boulder’s largest academic unit, with 19,295 undergraduate and graduate students, 1,982 faculty and staff and a general fund budget of $133.5 million.
The post is expected to be filled by July 1. The finalists will visit the campus for interviews during late February and March at times to be announced soon. UPDATE: Click here to see the schedule of town hall meetings with the finalists, as well as more detailed information on each candidate.
Paul Beale is a professor and chair of the Department of Physics at CU-Boulder. His research field is theoretical condensed matter physics and statistical mechanics. Beale was a postdoctoral research associate in the department of theoretical physics at Oxford University from 1982-1984, and he joined the CU physics faculty in 1984. He earned a bachelor’s in physics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1977 and a doctorate in physics from Cornell University in 1982.
Antonio Cepeda-Benito is a professor of psychology and dean of faculties and associate provost at Texas A&M University. His research areas of specialization are in behavioral and cellular neuroscience and clinical psychology. He has been on the faculty at Texas A&M since 1994 and prior to his current position he was associate dean of faculties. He earned a bachelor’s in psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1988, a master’s in psychology from Purdue University in 1991 and a doctorate from Purdue University in 1994.
Jeffrey Cox is a professor of English literature and the associate vice chancellor for faculty affairs at CU-Boulder. Cox specializes in English and European Romantic literature, cultural theory and cultural studies. He joined the faculty at CU-Boulder in 1998 as the director of the Center for the Humanities and the Arts, where he served until 2006. He was on the faculty of Texas A&M from 1981 until 1998. He received a bachelor’s from Wesleyan University in 1975 and a doctorate from the University of Virginia in 1981.
Steven Leigh is an associate dean in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Leigh is a biological anthropologist and his research focuses on the evolution of primate life histories, with special attention to human life history evolution. He has been on the faculty at the University of Illinois since 1994 and previously held appointments at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, and at Northwestern University. He received his bachelor’s in anthropology from Northwestern University in 1980, his master’s in anthropology from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in 1985 and his doctorate from Northwestern University in 1992.
The current dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Todd Gleeson, will complete his 10th year in that position at the end of June. Gleeson announced his resignation last August and he will return to the faculty in the Department of Integrative Physiology.