A longtime faculty member and associate dean has been selected to serve as interim dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
Brian Ross, a cognitive psychologist who came to the University of Illinois in 1982, will guide the U of I’s largest college after the departure of Harry E. Preble Dean Ruth Watkins, who announced her resignation earlier this year. Ross will assume his new role in July.
Ross has been in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences his entire career. He was hired as a faculty member after earning his PhD from Stanford University, and he has since earned many honors and awards as a professor in the top-ranked Department of Psychology.
Ross is also an original member of U of I’s Beckman Institute, the highly respected interdisciplinary research center where he joined the faculty in 1989. His research has focused on how people learn, reason, and understand in complex domains, with his work funded by the National Science Foundation, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the Institute of Education Sciences.
Ross is very active in his field. He has been the series editor of The Psychology of Learning and Motivation; the editor-in-chief of Memory & Cognition; co-author of a textbook, Cognitive Psychology; and has served as the chair of the governing board (president) of the Psychonomic Society.
As an associate dean under Watkins, Ross has primarily worked with science departments within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences to promote research, teaching, and public service. He also has a background in mathematics and statistics, with undergraduate and graduate degrees from Brown, Yale, and Rutgers universities in addition to Stanford.
Watkins, who has served as dean of the college since 2009, announced in April that she was leaving her post to serve as senior vice president for academic affairs at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Her new position begins August 1.
Ross is expected to serve as interim dean until a replacement for Watkins is hired through a formal search process.
