Three Women Competing for a Dean Position at Virginia Tech

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University has selected three finalists for the position of dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences. All three candidates are women. They will all visit the Virginia Tech by the end of the month for public forums, interviews, and receptions.

Cristina Della Coletta is the associate dean of humanities and the arts at the University of Virginia. She has served on the faculty of the department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese at the university since 1992. Dr. Coletta holds a master’s degree in Italian from the University of Virginia and a Ph.D. in Italian from the University of California at Los Angeles.

Janet Murray is associate dean for research in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. She also serves as Dean’s Professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Tech. She joined the faculty at Georgia Tech in 1999 after spending 28 years in faculty and research roles at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Murray holds a Ph.D. in English literature from Harvard University. She is the author of Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace (Free Press, 1997).

Elizabeth Spiller is associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences at Florida State University in Tallahassee. Since 2007, she also has served on the faculty in the university’s English department. Previously, she served on the faculty at the University of North Texas and Texas Christian University. Dr. Spiller is a graduate of Amherst College in Massachusetts and holds master’s and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University. She is the author of Reading and the History of Race in the Renaissance (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and Science, Reading, and Renaissance Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2004).

Update: On April 29, 2014, Dr. Spiller was named dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences.