Mission & History

The Heart of Our Work

The Dean’s Office of the School of Arts & Sciences is dedicated to fostering excellence in teaching, learning, and scholarship, creating transformative educational experiences that honor both intellectual rigor and human flourishing. We strive to build and sustain a community that values and supports:

  • Engaged educators, scholars, and learners who cultivate environments where students and colleagues alike are encouraged to grow, take intellectual risks, remain open to new ideas, and pursue inquiry that is both rigorous and reflective.
  • Thoughtful and visionary colleagues who bring creativity and analytical rigor to their professional practices, who listen actively and engage diverse perspectives with openness and respect, and who champion critical discourse by welcoming productive disagreement as essential to deep learning, meaningful collaboration, and institutional growth.
  • Trustworthy partners in community who bring humility, respect, and a spirit of collaboration to shared endeavors, understanding that a strong academic culture rests on relationships built on mutual accountability, generosity of spirit, and a shared sense of purpose.

Through these values, we affirm our commitment to an academic culture that balances individual achievement with collective responsibility, one in which the liberal arts and sciences can thrive as a foundation for critical thought, ethical action, and engaged citizenship, both now and for the future.

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  • History

    Although the University dates back to 1830, the School of Arts & Sciences, as it is known today, is much younger.

    Until the 1970s, Richmond College and Westhampton College had separate faculty, deans, and facilities. When the faculties of the two colleges merged to create the faculty of arts and sciences, the University decided to appoint a dean of faculty and to transition the roles of the coordinate college deans from managing academic affairs to supporting residential and student life, with a special emphasis on leadership development.

    In 1989, Dr. David Leary was appointed the third dean of arts and sciences faculty and began a conversation with President Richard Morrill about creating a School of Arts & Sciences, a move designed to clarify the University’s academic structure. The Board of Trustees formally established the School of Arts & Sciences in January of 1991; liberal arts majors in the Class of 1992 became the first cohort of students to graduate with bachelor’s degrees issued by the School of Arts & Sciences. Leary served as the school’s first dean until he returned to teaching in 2001.

    Since 1992 the School of Arts & Sciences has reimagined general education and fields of study to raise academic standards, increased student research, decreased faculty course loads to increase the time faculty could spend on their own research and mentoring students, shifted the University’s pedagogy from largely lecture-based teaching to a more interactive approach, and completed both the arts initiative that led to the opening of the Modlin Center for the Arts in 1996 and the science initiative that led to the dedication of the Gottwald Center for the Sciences in 2006.

    The School of Arts & Sciences maintains a close partnership with the deans of Richmond College and Westhampton College, working alongside both college deans to holistically guide students through their experience at Richmond. To that end, both college deans are also associate deans in the School.