Laura Carlson has been selected to serve as interim president of the University of Delaware. Her appointment is effective July 1, following the retirement of the university’s twenty-eighth president, Dennis Assanis.
According to the most recent federal data, the University of Delaware enrolls over 24,000 undergraduate and nearly 4,500 graduate students. Women represent 60 percent of the undergraduate student body.
Dr. Carlson has served as provost of the University of Delaware since 2022. Prior to her current role, she spent over two decades on the faculty at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. In addition to teaching as a professor of psychology, she held several administrative roles during her long tenure, including vice president, associate provost, and dean of the Graduate School.
An interdisciplinary scholar whose work spans the fields of psychology, computer science, engineering, architecture, and linguistics, Dr. Carlson focuses her research on spatial cognition – how people mentally represent the places and objects around them. She is the co-editor of Functional Features in Language and Space: Insights from Perception, Categorization, and Development (Oxford University Press, 2005).
“I am grateful to President Assanis for his vision and dedicated service. Since coming to the University of Delaware three years ago, I have fallen in love with UD — the passion of our students, the brilliance and enduring commitment of our faculty and staff, and our close-knit Blue Hen community that extends from campus throughout the state and beyond,” said Dr. Carlson. “I am honored and humbled to be stepping in to guide this very special institution, and I thank the board of trustees for their confidence and support. I look forward to convening campus conversations this summer and fall to reaffirm our mission and identity and to together design a path forward that is uniquely our own.”
Dr. Carlson is a cum laude graduate of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, where she majored in the psychology of language. She holds a master’s degree from Michigan State University and a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.