Two days after former dean of Arts & Sciences Ed Ayers officially took over as president of the University of Richmond on July 1, UVA named Karen Ryan interim dean. Ryan, a Slavic languages and literatures professor, was associate dean for the arts, humanities and social sciences. She temporarily takes the helm as UVA is, quite literally, digging into several facilities expansions for the School, most notably the South Lawn Project. But even when the 110,000-square-foot Arts & Sciences building is complete, the facilities question will still be a work in progress.
“We want to build enrollments and majors in math and science in the college,” says Ryan. “I suspect our enrollment both in math and fine and performing arts would be higher if our facilities were more appealing and capacious.”
Interim Arts & Sciences Dean Karen Ryan gets to do the fun stuff, at least in contrast to South Lawn fundraiser and former dean Ed Ayers.
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Fundraising has become a large part of a dean’s job, yet compared to Ayers, who did a lot of fundraising for building projects like South Lawn, “what I get to do is fun,” says Ryan. “I get to talk to people about programs—what we do inside those buildings.” The challenges of the job also include increasing faculty hiring to accommodate the gradual up-tick in undergraduate enrollment.
By filling the interim position with Ryan, the University gets its first female dean of the School of Arts & Sciences. “I think it’s been a really remarkable change” in the number and level of positions for women at UVA, says Ryan, who’s been at the University since 1989. While the numbers of female full professors are growing more slowly, women have dramatically increased amongst the junior faculty, she says.
But don’t expect to see Ryan at the helm for long. While several recent interim deans ended up in the permanent positions, Ryan says she’s not a candidate in the ongoing dean search. “I think with the lead time, they should get excellent candidates. This is one of the best deanships in the country.”
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