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Preparing for Growth, ASU’s Core College Creates Divisional Dean Positions

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Arizona State University’s largest college, currently composed of 39 schools, departments, programs, centers and institutes representing the university’s traditional core academic disciplines, is about to re-organize to help its units manage resources more effectively and to respond to the opportunities and challenges of ASU’s projected growth and change.

As of July 1, 2004, the college is adding four divisional deans for undergraduate programs and for the faculties of the humanities, sciences, and social sciences, replacing a past administrative organization of three associate deans for academic programs, personnel, and research and facilities. The divisional deans will report to ASU Vice President and Dean David A. Young.

“The university is currently engaged in rapid growth and dynamic transformation as we move to meet the needs of the state and President Crow’s vision of the ‘New American University’,” Young noted. “The college’s new administrative structure will allow us to be fully responsive to the challenges of dramatic change and will empower our units and faculty to participate fully in what we anticipate will be an exciting future for ASU.”

Divisional Dean Alan Artibise will lead the Division of Social Sciences, composed of the departments of Aerospace Studies, Anthropology, Chicana and Chicano Studies, Family and Human Development, Geography, Military Science, Political Science, Sociology, and the African and African American Studies, Jewish Studies, and Women's Studies programs. Artibise, currently Dean of the College of Urban and Public Affairs at the University of New Orleans, will join ASU as of July 1.

Divisional Dean Simon Peacock will lead the Division of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, which includes the School of Life Sciences and the departments of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Geological Sciences, Kinesiology, Mathematics and Statistics, Physics and Astronomy, Psychology and Speech and Hearing Science. Peacock is currently Interim Associate Dean of Academic Personnel in the college.

Divisional Dean Deborah Losse will lead the Division of Humanities, which includes the departments of English, History, Languages and Literatures, Philosophy and Religious Studies and the Interdisciplinary Humanities Program. Losse has served as Chair of the Department of Languages and Literatures since 2001.

Divisional Dean Daniel Bivona will lead the college’s Undergraduate Programs Office. He is currently Associate Dean for Academic Programs in the college.

Biographies of CLAS Divisional Deans:

	Alan F. J. Artibise is Divisional Dean of Social Sciences, Executive Director of the Institute for Social Science Research and Professor of Political Science in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University. A distinguished scholar, he holds a Ph.D. in Urban History from the University of British Columbia and a BA in History and Political Science from the University of Manitoba. Dr. Artibise has published and taught in the areas of urban history, regional planning, public policy administration, and urban studies. His research interests include comparative urban development; urban and regional planning; transportation planning and public policy; governance issues; community visioning, planning and implementation; community development and revitalization; and tourism and resort planning and development. Dr. Artibise has an extensive publishing record, has received numerous fellowships and awards, and has been very active in scholarly, professional, and community organizations. Prior to joining ASU, he was dean of the College of Urban and Public Affairs at the University of New Orleans. He also has served in academic and administrative positions at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and at the Universities of Victoria, Winnipeg, and British Columbia. He has been historian for the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa and was President of a consulting firm. He is a certified planner. Professor Artibise has lectured in more than seventeen countries and his research has been published in seven languages.
	Daniel Bivona is Divisional Dean of Undergraduate Programs. Previously, he was the college’s Associate Dean for Academic Programs. He also has been Chair of the Department of English at ASU. Dr. Bivona is an English literature scholar with a Ph.D. from Brown University and is the author of two books focused on the relationship between British imperialism and nineteenth- and twentieth-century British culture. Desire and Contradiction (Manchester UP, 1990) treats the relationship between the imperial project and domestic culture in the nineteenth century and British Imperial Literature, 1870-1940: Writing and the Administration of Empire (published by Cambridge University Press, 1998) focuses on the administrative ethos of bureaucratic rule as it is constructed and contested in a variety of works ranging from the travel narratives of H. M. Stanley and T. E. Lawrence, to the fiction of Kipling, Conrad, Cary, and Orwell, to the apologetics of such imperial administrators as Lord Cromer and Frederick Lugard. His teaching interests and experience include literary theory, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literature and culture, Darwinism, sexuality studies, adventure fiction, Victorian and Modernist literature, and the history of the novel.
	Deborah N. Losse is Divisional Dean of the Humanities. She is a Professor of French and most recently has been Chair of the Department of Languages and Literatures at ASU. She also has served one year as President of ASU’s Academic Senate and six years as Associate Dean of the Graduate College. In her role as chair of the Department of Languages and Literatures, she oversaw the instruction and research of 45 line faculty and 15 lecturers in twenty languages. While in that position, she served on the University Design Team, the President’s Academic Council, the search committee for the Provost of ASU-West, and as chair of the search for the director of African and African American Studies. In her academic career, Losse spent two years teaching French at the Government Secondary School in Katsina, Nigeria, where she taught French and English as a second language as a Peace Corps volunteer. Completing her M.A. and Ph.D. in French at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she joined the faculty in the Department of Languages and Literatures at Arizona State University. As a scholar, Dr. Losse’s primary area of research and teaching is Renaissance French literature. Her secondary area of research and teaching is African Literature of French expression. She has published two books, Rhetoric at Play: Rabelais and Satirical Eulogy and Sampling the Book. Renaissance Prologues of the French Conteurs and numerous articles in such journals as Romanic Review, Poetics Today, Neophilologus, Medievalia et Humanistica, Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme, Sixteenth Century Studies, and Ba Shiru. She conducts research in France on a regular basis.
	Simon M. Peacock is Divisional Dean of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. Prior to his current appointment, he served as Interim Associate Dean for Academic Personnel in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and as Chair of the Department of Geological Sciences. Dr. Peacock joined the Department of Geology at Arizona State University as an Assistant Professor in 1985 and is currently Professor of Geology. A distinguished scholar, he earned his Ph.D. in Geology from U.C.L.A. in 1985 and received his B.S. and M.S. degrees concurrently from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1981. In 1991-1992 he was a Guest Professor at the ETH in Zurich, Switzerland and in 1998-1999 he was a Visiting Scientist at the Pacific Geoscience Centre in Sidney, British Columbia. Dr. Peacock's research focuses on understanding the thermal, petrologic, and seismological structure of subduction zones and is funded by the National Science Foundation. Dr. Peacock has published over 50 papers in Science, Nature, and leading geoscience journals. He has presented lectures and short courses at universities in eight countries. In 2001 he received the National Science Foundation’s Antarctica Service Medal. Dr. Peacock is currently a Fellow of the Geological Society of America and a member of the American Geophysical Union and the Mineralogical Society of America and serves on the editorial boards of Geology and the Journal of Metamorphic Geology.