Interim executive dean named for Arts and Sciences

COLUMBUS -- Barbara R. Snyder, interim executive vice president and provost, has asked University President Karen A. Holbrook to recommend to the Board of Trustees the appointment of Jacqueline Jones Royster as the interim executive dean of the Colleges of the Arts and Sciences. Royster currently serves as the interim dean of the College of Humanities and as a professor of English. The board will consider the recommendation at its May 7 meeting. Her appointment would become effective on June 1.

“Professor Royster has done a superb job in her capacity as interim dean during the past year, and I am deeply appreciative of her willingness to assume this new position while we conduct a search for a permanent executive dean,” Snyder said.

Royster is a distinguished scholar whose research has a two-fold focus: the rhetorical history of women of African Descent and the development of literacy. She is the author of four books, including “Traces of a Stream: Literacy and Social Change Among African-American Women,” which was awarded the Mina P. Shaughnessy Prize from the Modern Languages Association. Her most recent book, “Profiles of Ohio Women, 1803-2003,” was commissioned by the Ohio Women’s Advisory Council and the Ohioana Library Association, as a tribute to 200 women whose contributions have had a positive impact on the course of history in Ohio and beyond. She has taught all levels of undergraduate and graduate courses at Ohio State.

Royster was the associate dean of the College of Humanities prior to being asked to serve as the college’s interim dean. She has received many prestigious awards, including Ohio Pioneer in Education (higher education) from the Ohio Department of Education, the 2004 Exemplar Award from the Conference on College Composition and Communication, and the 2004 YWCA Woman of Achievement Award.

Royster joined the Ohio State faculty in 1992 following 16 years on the faculty at Spelman College in Atlanta. She is a graduate of Spelman and received both her master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Michigan.

Since 1991, Royster has spent summers teaching at the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College in Vermont where teachers from rural and urban settings across the country and around the world, including Ohio, gather to enhance their abilities to teach literature and writing.