The University of Delaware College of Arts and Sciences has begun the academic year with new additions to the leadership team, including an associate dean and several new department chairs and directors.​

Tania Roth has joined the College as the associate dean for the natural sciences. She comes to this role from a position as a professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. She has significant leadership experience having served as chair of the department since 2019, and prior to that, as the department’s director of graduate studies. Roth has also played a key role in the design and programming of Building X. Before joining the faculty of the University of Delaware in 2010, Roth was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She has received numerous awards and honors for scholarship including a Young Investigator Award from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, the 2010 Ziskind-Somerfeld award from the Society of Biological Psychiatry and a 2015 Early Career Impact Award from the Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, and she was elected a Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences in 2012.

The College also welcomes the following to new roles:

Robin Andreasen begins the year as the interim chair of the Department of Linguistics and Cognitive Sciences. She has served as professor in the department since 1999. She is a principal investigator on UD’s NSF ADVANCE Institutionalization grant, which involves research on the policies, practices and structures that support faculty diversity, equity and inclusion.

Alice Ba, who was recently appointed Emma Smith Morris Professor of Political Science, will serve as interim chair of the Department of Political Science and International Relations. She joined UD in 2000. She is renowned for her work in the areas of international relations of East and Southeast Asia, which focuses on the structures and processes of regionalism and regional integration, cooperative regime building; and the asymmetric relations/strategies of smaller and major powers. Ba’s recent work has addressed the role of strategic narratives and the changing conditions of regional cooperation in Asia.

Mark Clodfelter has been named director of the UD School of Music. He joined the faculty of UD in 2019 from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro and has served as interim director of the school since 2020. Professor of trumpet and co-director of the UD trumpet studio, Clodfelter is a versatile performer and multiple Grammy-recommended recording artist who can be heard as the principal trumpet of the Asheville Symphony Orchestra and the Trade Winds Recording Ensemble.

Jennifer Earl has been named chair of the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice. She joined UD from the School of Sociology at the University of Arizona where she served as a professor since 2011, and prior to that as assistant professor. Earl is an international leader in the study of social movement repression (with a specialty in protest policing), the study of how activists mobilize using digital and social media, and the study of young people and activism.

Cheryl Ernst has joined UD as the director of the English Language Institute. She comes from the University of Oregon where she served as executive director of the American English Institute, which offered credit and non-credit programs for students interested in general English and undergraduate-level academic English preparation, as well as an online teacher-training program.

Natalija Mijatović has joined UD as the chair of the Department of Art and Design. She comes to UD from Binghamton University, SUNY, where she was a professor of painting and served terms as chair of the Faculty Senate and chair of the Department of Art and Design. Recent exhibitions include the invitational exhibit Altered, Changed, Repurposed, Reconsidered at the Trumansburg Conservatory of Fine Arts, NY, among many others.

Robert West has been named interim chair of the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. A professor in the department, he joined UD in 2022. Prior to UD he was the Elizabeth P. Allen Distinguished University Professor at DePauw University. His research explores the neuroscience processes that allow people to adapt over time as related to control of attention in external and internal worlds, reward processing, ethical decision-making and prospective memory, with a focus on how the processes may be shaped by technology.​