Three finalists named for liberal arts dean

Three finalists for the dean’s position at the College of Liberal Arts were announced Oct. 17 by the Office of the Provost.

 

The three finalists are: Steven Lynn, Douglas Epperson and Angel Kwolek-Folland.

 

Each candidate will visit the WSU Pullman campus, and will have a session open to all faculty, staff and students that will be video streamed and archived at https://experience.wsu.edu/NewSite/Calendar/Calendar.aspx.  The videostreamed files will be password protected. For password information please contact Donna Cofield, Cofield@wsu.edu.  

 

Here are brief bios on the candidates:

* Steven Lynn, senior associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences, Louise Fry Scudder Professor in the English Department, and also chair of the religious studies department at the University of South Carolina.

 

Lynn will be visiting campus Oct. 27-28.  His open session is slated for 8:30-10 a.m., Tuesday, Oct. 28.

 

Since joining the USC faculty in 1982, Lynn has over twenty years of administrative experience, including chairing the English department from 2001 to 2007. His recent national activities include serving on a SACS Re-Accreditation Committee, hosting the national Association of Departments of English meeting, and leading (with Paula Krebs) an ADE-sponsored day-long training workshop for new department chairs.

Lynn’s teaching and publishing interests include eighteenth-century literature (especially Samuel Johnson), rhetoric and composition (especially pedagogy), and science fiction (especially nanotechnology and ethics). His books include “Samuel Johnson After Deconstruction;”  “A Short Guide to Writing, Literature: An Introduction, and Texts and Contexts” (5th edition forthcoming). His current project is “The Cambridge Introduction to Rhetoric and Composition,” and he is contributing editor for the eighteenth-century section of “The Year’s Work in English Studies,” published by Oxford University Press. He has published essays in College English; Eighteenth-Century Studies; The Age of Johnson; The Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson; Fresh Reflections on Samuel Johnson; and Twentieth-Century American Critics, among others.

Lynn is a member of the Nanocenter’s nSTS Group, which received a $1.3m grant from the National Science Foundation to organize international conferences and study the societal implications of nanotechnology. He is also part of a group that has received a $200,000 NUE grant from the NSF to develop undergraduate programs in nanotechnology, and he has taught in the Citizens School for Nanotechnology from its inception. He earned his Ph.D. in English from the University of Texas in 1981.

 

* Douglas Epperson, associate dean and professor in psychology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Iowa State University.

 

Epperson will be on campus Oct. 29-30. His open session will be 8:30–10 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 30.

In addition to his current role as associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences since 2003, Epperson’s experience at Iowa State includes serving as the interim chair for the department of psychology from 1996-99. He has also served as that department’s associate chair on two different occasions. In addition to those duties, he was also the interim director of the office of pre-collegiate programs for talented and gifted, and the director of the counseling psychology program, which was recently ranked first in the nation among university counseling psychology programs in regards to research productivity. His primary research focuses on issues related to the reliable and accurate assessment of the risk of future offenses by sex offenders and he continues to do limited research in the area of women in science and engineering. He is the lead author of the Minnesota Sex Offender Screening Tool-Revised (MnSOST-R), one of the three most commonly used actuarial risk-assessment tools. He also developed a similar tool for juvenile sexual offenders (JSORRAT-II).

Epperson received his Ph.D. in psychology from Ohio State University in 1979.

 

* Angel Kwolek-Folland, associate provost for academic affairs and acting associate provost for faculty development, University of Florida.

 

Kwolek-Folland is scheduled to visit campus Nov. 3-4.  Her open session is scheduled for 8:30-10 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 4.

 

She has been at the University of Florida since 2000 when she assumed the directorship of the Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research. In 2005 she became an associate dean in the College of Liberal Arts. She joined the provost’s office in 2007. She has taught courses in history, women’s studies, and American studies, and her research focuses on U.S. women’s history, women’s labor and business history, gender studies and material culture studies. Currently, she is researching international dimensions of contemporary gender rights categories. Her first book, “Engendering Business: Men and Women in the Corporate Office, 1870-1930,” was published in 1994 and won the 1995 Sierra Prize for best historical monograph from the Western Association of Women Historians. Her second book is “Incorporating Women: A History of Women and Business in the United States.”

Kwolek-Folland is a J. William Fulbright Senior Specialist candidate, which allows her to work with college and university departments outside the US on research and program development and curricular transformation. In 2004, she received a Florida Blue Key Distinguished Faculty Award. She earned her Ph.D. in women’s history from the University of Minnesota in 1987, and taught at the University of Kansas for 13 years prior to going to the University of Florida.

 

WSU’s dean of liberal arts position was opened on Aug. 16 when the previous dean, Erich Lear, return to the faculty. Since then, Paul Whitney, associate dean and professor of psychology, has served as interim dean

 

The search committee was appointed in January 2008, chaired by Dan Bernardo, dean of the College of Agricultural, Human and Natural Resource Sciences. The search committee and administration have selected three finalists who will be invited to visit WSU.

While numerous visits and interviews are slated during the visits, all faculty and staff are invited to attend the open sessions. The open sessions will be announced through WSU Announcements as soon as schedules are finalized.

 

A search firm, in collaboration the search committee, has guided the search process. The search has been timed so that the concluding phase takes place during the semester so that faculty, staff, and students will have an opportunity to participate.

The search committee members are: