First College dean candidate will give presentation Aug. 24


LAWRENCE — Walter Hawthorne, professor and chair of the Department of History at Michigan State University, will make a public presentation Monday, Aug. 24, as a candidate for dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Kansas.

Hawthorne is the first of four candidates for the position who will make public presentations during their respective campus visits. His talk will be from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. in the Centennial Room of the Kansas Union.

Hawthorne’s research focus is on upper Guinea, the Atlantic and Brazil, with particular interest in the history of slavery and the slave trade. His publications include two books, “Planting Rice and Harvesting Slaves: Transformations along the Guinea-Bissau Coast, 1400–1900” in 2003, and “From Africa to Brazil: Culture, Identity, and an Atlantic Slave Trade 1600-1830” in 2010. He has received several grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities. As department chair, he manages a body composed of 57 faculty and staff members.

Hawthorne, who joined Michigan State in 2005, has also taught at Ohio University, the University of Vermont and Mills College in Oakland, California. He earned his doctorate in history in 1998 from Stanford University.

The dean search committee, led by Professor of English Marta Caminero-Santangelo, invites students, faculty and staff to attend all candidate presentations and provide feedback of their impressions. Each candidate will share their ideas on the topic “21st Century Challenges to Liberal Arts and Sciences (and how KU will address them).” The university will release information about each candidate roughly 48 hours before his or her talk. Additional candidates are scheduled to appear:

  • Candidate 2 presentation: 4-5 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 27, in the Centennial Room, Kansas Union
  • Candidate 3 presentation: 3-4 p.m. Sept. 2 in the Centennial Room, Kansas Union
  • Candidate 4 presentation: 3-4 p.m. Sept. 4 in Alderson Auditorium, Kansas Union

Candidate presentations will be recorded and will be available for viewing after all candidates have appeared on campus. Evaluations of all candidates are due by 8 a.m. Sept. 8.

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences is the home of the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, mathematics, arts, and languages at KU. It includes the School of the Arts the School of Languages, Literatures & Cultures, and the School of Public Affairs & Administration. It offers more than 100 majors, minors and certificates in 53 academic departments and programs, enrolling 15,000 undergraduate and 2,000 graduate students and employing more than 600 faculty members.

Fri, 08/21/2015

author

Jill Hummels

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Jill Hummels

Office of the Provost

785-864-6577