Sarah Mangelsdorf Appointed Dean of the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences
Dear Colleague:
I am very pleased to announce that Sarah Mangelsdorf, currently the Harry E. Preble Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has accepted President Bienen's and my invitation to serve as the Dean of the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, beginning on August 16.
Mangelsdorf brings to Northwestern an outstanding record of successful scholarship and academic leadership. She possesses a strong passion for the liberal arts and sciences and a sense of excitement about the potential for extraordinary accomplishments in Weinberg College.
Mangelsdorf has been Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Illinois since 2004, the first woman to hold this position there. The College is comprised of 15,000 undergraduates, 2,500 graduate students, 800 faculty, and more than 50 departments and academic units. While Dean of Arts and Sciences at Illinois she has greatly increased the diversity of the faculty and more than doubled the Colleges gift funds. Prior to serving in this role, she held leadership positions as Associate Provost and as Head of the Psychology Department, one of the top psychology departments in the country.
Mangelsdorf earned her bachelors degree in psychology in 1980 from Oberlin College in Ohio and her doctorate in 1988 in child psychology from the University of Minnesota. She joined the Psychology Department faculty at Illinois in 1991, after serving for four years on the faculty of the University of Michigan.
Her scholarship focuses on social and emotional development in infancy and early childhood, and she is the author of numerous articles in developmental psychology. She has also served on the editorial boards of five academic journals, and currently serves on the editorial boards of Child Development and Infant Behavior and Development. While at Illinois, she has been honored several times for her teaching - winning the Mabel Hohenboken Teaching award in 1997 and the William Prokasy Teaching Award in 1998, her college's highest award for teaching.
President Bienen and I are grateful to the Weinberg College dean search committee for its diligent work in screening potential candidates and identifying those with the greatest potential for success at Weinberg College. We are also extremely grateful to Aldon Morris, Leon Forrest Professor of Sociology, who postponed his scheduled leave last fall to serve so ably as Interim Dean of Weinberg.
Sincerely,
Daniel Linzer
Provost
May 12, 2008