The University of Florida (UF), the flagship university for the state of Florida, ranked among the nation’s top public universities by U.S. News and World Report, is accepting inquiries, nominations, and applications for the position of Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
Located in Gainesville since 1906, UF has 16 colleges, a major academic health center, a championship-winning athletic program, a top-ranked undergraduate online program, and, in keeping with its land-grant mission, one of the nation’s most comprehensive agriculture and natural resources programs. All are based at the University’s 2,000-acre campus, which joins its historic red-brick core with advanced facilities and preserved natural areas and connects to adjacent innovation, commercial, and residential districts.
UF has approximately 60,000 students, 32,000 employees, 6,400 faculty members, an $8 billion annual budget, and more than 140 mission-focused units across Florida. It is a member of the Association of American Universities, a group comprising America’s 71 leading public and private research universities. More than 70,000 students applied as freshmen for the 2023-24 academic year — a new record.
Several qualities distinguish UF from today’s leading public research universities. The first is its highly comprehensive breadth on a single campus, facilitating interdisciplinary collaboration among, for example, faculty within the adjacent colleges of journalism, engineering, and medicine. The second is its unwavering support from the state of Florida, which has endorsed UF’s drive to become one of the nation’s very best public research universities — supporting those efforts since 2013 with hundreds of millions of dollars in additional funding to grow its faculty ranks by 600 members. UF’s third exceptional quality is its dynamism. Like Florida, now the nation’s third-largest state and among the fastest-growing, UF is undergoing rapid transformation as it pursues the overarching aspiration to be “a premier university that the state, nation, and world look to for leadership.”
The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) comprises the humanities, the social and behavioral sciences, and the physical, natural, and mathematical sciences. With over 750 teaching faculty members with outstanding academic credentials and achievements, excellent research and educational programs, and a strong commitment to undergraduate and graduate education, the College currently enrolls 1,925 graduate students and 12,450 undergraduate students with an external award portfolio of around $40 million a year. The College has 22 doctoral programs and offers 43 undergraduate majors. The College leadership team consists of the Dean, seven Associate/Assistant Deans, 22 Department Chairs, and more than 17 Center Directors. The Dean is the chief academic and administrative officer of the College and reports directly to the Provost.
The successful candidate will demonstrate outstanding capacity to provide leadership for the College’s broad spectrum of academic activities, an engaging vision for the future of CLAS, a demonstrated record of recruiting and retaining faculty, a commitment to the principles and practices of shared governance, strong fiscal and personnel management skills, an ability to enhance research, and success in fundraising.
Minimum qualifications for this position are an earned doctorate, a distinguished record of academic, teaching, and research achievements worthy of appointment as professor with tenure in an academic department in the College, and an excellent record of academic leadership and administrative experience.
All applications, nominations and inquiries are invited. Applications should include, as separate documents, a CV or resume and a letter of interest addressing the themes in the leadership profile available on the WittKieffer website.
WittKieffer is assisting the University of Florida in this search. For fullest consideration, candidate materials should be received by February 7, 2025. Application materials should be submitted using WittKieffer’s candidate portal.
Nominations and inquiries can be directed to: Zachary A. Smith, Ph.D., Amy Crutchfield, and Natalie Song at UFDeanofCLAS@wittkieffer.com
The University of Florida is an Equal Opportunity Employer. The University is committed to non-discrimination with respect to race, creed, color, religion, age, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, marital status, national origin, political opinions or affiliations, genetic information and veteran status in all aspects of employment including recruitment, hiring, promotions, transfers, discipline, terminations, wage and salary administration, benefits, and training.
The “government in the sunshine” laws of Florida require that all documents relating to the search process, including letters of application/nomination and reference, be available for public inspection upon request.
