From Interim Dean Rachel A. Walsh, April 2025
After a much needed and well-earned spring break, we’re excited to enter our final quarter packed with CAHSS spring events including the Harper Lecture, a full slate of concerts and theater performances, art exhibits, spring sports and all the usual preparations leading up to graduation.
It’s an exhilarating, hectic and often stressful time and more important than ever for everyone in our CAHSS community — students, faculty and staff — to reach out and rely on each other’s wisdom and support. For students, that means seeking out faculty members for guidance, for faculty and staff members, that means relying on colleagues as the pace quickens and the end of the year looms. As always, please remember that CAHSS offers resources and support to help you or anyone in our community cope with academic, social, mental or physical health and identity-based concerns.
I would also like to remind everyone that CAHSS faculty and many staff, including me, keep regular office hours each week to offer advice, counsel or answer any questions you might have. I continue to be available in the CAHSS Second Floor Student Lounge every Wednesday from 12-1 pm.
I am pleased to report that we have made great progress in our search for a new CAHSS Dean, thanks to the participation of members representing our CAHSS community including student leaders who, along with faculty and many staff members, have participated in the interview process and shared their invaluable perspectives with final candidates. Finalists will be invited back to campus during the first few weeks in April for additional engagement. The Provost will make the ultimate selection of the new Dean with the goal of having the individual in place by July 1, 2025.
We will successfully welcome eight new tenure track faculty and one new teaching line faculty along with a new Director of the Lamont School of Music in Fall 2025, and four additional teaching line searches continuing in spring. Thanks to the many faculty and staff members serving on these search committees for your time and commitment and to everyone who has shown an interest in setting a course for the future of CAHSS.
Our new CAHSS Support Services teams continue to deliver high levels of support to faculty, staff and students. You can find specific roles and responsibilities for each of the four teams within Support Services on pages three and four of the updated Staff Directory in Digication.
Finally, I’d like to remind students considering summer coursework to sign up now for one or more of the 90 online summer classes CAHSS offers that you can take from anywhere.
Thank you for everything you do to support our College, our mission and each other as we move together through spring quarter and toward celebrating our spring 2025 CAHSS graduates.
Warmly,
Rachel A. Walsh
Interim Dean, Associate Professor
College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
