Messages from the Dean

Brian Reed, Divisional Dean of Humanities and Professor of English, shares how the Humanities Academic Services Center has been successful. 

Dean Harris reflects on the Dean's Academy Futurists, how little bets, risk-taking, and experimentation paid off, and the importance of futurism in this moment.

An essay focusing on a pedagogical experimental model called the Curiosity Clinic.  

With higher education being pressure-tested by financial strains, technological advances, and shifts in the cultural and demographic landscape, there are key questions we must address to ensure the benefits it brings to this nation and its many and varied communities for the future. 

Students share their perspectives on the impact of AI in the classroom, how faculty members are handling classroom policies, and why open dialogue needs to be at the heart of AI policy.

Watch the recording of the 2025 College of Arts & Sciences Welcome Event.

"I believe that a university degree must deliver on the inextricably twinned promises of life-long personal transformation and enhanced opportunity for career success," writes Dean Dianne Harris.

The Dean's Academy Futurists — which includes faculty from across all four divisions of the college and from diverse disciplinary backgrounds — consider the future of higher education and liberal arts education. The Futurists are a part of the dean's Rethinking the Academy initiative.

Dean Dianne Harris offers a personal reflection on the importance of voting.

Dean Dianne Harris shares a poem that she wrote as we welcome new and returning Huskies to the College of Arts & Sciences.

The practices we use in higher education are always changing in response to new technologies and shifting priorities, which in the College of Arts & Sciences include an increased focus on student success and increasingly collaborative modes of research and creative productivity. 

February may be the shortest month of the year, but it was very busy, especially for our College of Arts & Sciences Rethinking the Academy initiative. We were grateful to have an extra, 29th day this year since all aspects of the initiative were activated.

Dean Dianne Harris reflects on the importance of being together in person on campus after spending so much time interacting virtually during the pandemic. 

What tools are required in order to think productively about the future? What methods do we need to learn to structure futurist thinking, and what values will inform our visions of the future? How might we be able to identify a set of preferred futures, and then set about working towards their eventual realization?

The dean's leadership team has adopted a set of guiding principles for our shared work as we continue to reimagine liberal arts education for the next 50 years.