Lisa Vollendorf was named provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, California. The university enrolls more than 8,500 undergraduate students and about 750 graduate students. Women are 62 percent of the undergraduate student body.
Since 2012, Dr. Vollendorf has been serving as dean of the College of Humanities and Arts at San Jose State University in California. She will become provost at Sonoma State on July 1.
Prior to joining the faculty at San Jose State University, Dr. Vollendorf was a professor of Spanish at California State University, Long Beach. There, she served for four years as chair of the department of Romance, German, and Russian languages and literatures. Earlier in her career, Dr. Vollendorf taught at Wayne State University in Detroit and Miami University in Ohio.
A native of Colorado, Dr. Vollendorf earned a bachelor’s degree in English and Spanish at Colorado State University. She earned a Ph.D. in Romance languages from the University of Pennsylvania.