The University of Nebraska at Lincoln has chosen four scholars as finalists for the position of dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. All four candidates will visit campus by March 7 for interviews and a series of public forums. Two of the four finalists are women.
Barbara J. Risman is professor and chair of the department of sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Earlier in her career, Dr. Risman was the Alumni Research Professor and director of graduate studies at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. She is the author of Gender Vertigo: American Families in Transition (Yale University Press, 1999) and the editor of Families as They Really Are (W.W. Norton, 2009). Dr. Risman is a graduate of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Washington.
Susan Sterett is a professor of political science at the University of Denver. She served as chair of the political science department at the university from 2005 to 2009 and was the associate dean of the Division of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences from 2009 to 2011. She is currently on leave from her teaching duties and is serving as program director for law and social sciences at the National Science Foundation. Professor Sterett is the editor of Disaster and Sociolegal Studies (Quid Pro, 2013). Dr. Sterett is a graduate of the University of California at San Diego. She earned a Ph.D. in jurisprudence and social policy at the University of California at Berkeley.