LAS News magazine

Greetings LAS alumni and friends!

It is my great honor to introduce myself as the Harry E. Preble Dean of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. I began my new role on August 2 after serving for 18 years as a professor and administrator at Purdue University. I look forward to leading this great college during this exciting and important era for the liberal arts and sciences.

First, a bit more about myself: I earned my PhD in English from the University of California, Riverside, and joined the University of Nebraska as a faculty member in 1996. In 1998, I was named coordinator of the African American & African Studies Program, and in 2003 I joined Purdue as a professor and director of the African American Studies & Research Center. From 2016 until this year I served as head of the School of Interdisciplinary Studies in the College of Liberal Arts.

As an interdisciplinary literary scholar, I am thrilled to have this opportunity to work alongside people from all of the many disciplines in LAS. Whether our topic of study is literature or mathematics, biochemistry, astronomy, political science, psychology, entomology, philosophy, foreign languages, geology, chemical and biomolecular engineering, or any one of the many other fields in LAS, we all have common ground and purpose, which is to prepare well-rounded and effective leaders for the 21st century.

My first step as dean will be something I’ve strived to do my entire life: to learn. I’m going to be doing everything I can over the next weeks and months to better understand this big and wonderful college. In the future, I anticipate that I will be sharing many new ideas and initiatives that LAS is engaging in to meet our mission of empowering individuals to understand and change the world.

Finally, I would like to express deep gratitude to my predecessor, Gene Robinson, who served as interim dean during the most challenging period for higher education in our lifetimes. Gene will be returning to his role as director of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, but he will take with him the profound appreciation and respect of all of LAS for his tireless efforts to lead the college during the COVID-19 pandemic. We were fortunate to have him at the helm.

With best wishes,

Venetria K. Patton 
Harry E. Preble Dean of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences 

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