In Review

An academic leader credited with increasing the size and diversity of the faculty at Lehigh University has been named the new dean of the faculty of Arts, Sciences & Engineering at Rochester.

Donald Hall, who has served since 2011 as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and professor of English at Lehigh, will become the University’s next Robert L. and Mary L. Sproull Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Sciences & Engineering, beginning July 1.

Rob Clark, University provost and senior vice president for research, announced the appointment this spring.

As dean at Rochester, Hall will have academic, administrative, and financial responsibility for a unit that’s home to more than 350 faculty members, 5,500 undergraduates, and 1,300 graduate students at the University. He also will lead a team of deans responsible for the School of Arts & Sciences, the Hajim School of Engineering & Applied Sciences, and the undergraduate College. The dean of faculty oversees budgeting, development, advancement, faculty hiring and retention, and departmental leadership within the unit.

Hall succeeds Peter Lennie, who held the Robert L. and Mary L. Sproull Deanship until stepping down in June 2017. Richard (Rick) Waugh, who has served for the past year as interim dean while a nationwide search was under way, will return to his roles as vice provost for research and professor of biomedical engineering.

In his current role, Hall administers Lehigh’s largest college, a position that oversees 18 departments, 15 cross-disciplinary programs, and nine centers and institutes, as well as 254 full-time faculty and 108 professional staff. Under his leadership, the number of full-time tenure-track faculty in Lehigh’s college has reached a historic high. And of 66 successful full-time faculty searches completed since 2011, more than 50 percent led to hiring of individuals from groups underrepresented in their fields.

As a scholar, his research and teaching focus on British studies, queer theory, cultural studies, and professional studies. He frequently speaks on the value of a liberal arts education and the need for nurturing global competencies in students and interdisciplinary dialogue in and beyond the classroom.

His many books include The Academic Community: A Manual for Change (Ohio State University Press, 2007) and Reading Sexualities: Hermeneutic Theory and the Future of Queer Studies (Routledge, 2009). Before joining Lehigh, Hall was the Jackson Distinguished Professor of English at West Virginia University and chaired the Department of English from 2007 to 2011. Before West Virginia, he was a professor of English and chair of the Department of English at California State University, Northridge, where he taught for 13 years.

Hall earned his PhD in English from the University of Maryland, a master’s degree in comparative literature from the University of Illinois, and a bachelor’s degree in German and political science from the University of Alabama.

The Robert L. and Mary L. Sproull Deanship was endowed in 1999 through the support of the late Robert Sproull—who served as the University’s seventh president—and his wife, the late Mary Sproull.