Susan Sterett, the third of four finalists for the position of dean of UNL’s College of Arts and Sciences, will give a public presentation and have an open forum from 3:30-5:30 p.m. March 4 at the Lied Commons.

Administrators, faculty, students and staff are encouraged to attend the presentation and provide their thoughts via this webpage.

Sterett, a professor of political science at the University of Denver, also was associate dean of the divisions of arts, humanities and social sciences, and was chair of the department of political science. She is currently on leave at the National Science Foundation, where she is the program director for Law and Social Sciences. In addition to managing the program, she has collaborated with colleagues on a cross-directorate coastal sustainability solicitation.

While at NSF, she has participated in collaboration with the National Institute of Justice, in a forensics working group, and in the Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable convened by the White House Domestic Policy Council.

Sterett’s areas of scholarship include law and society, social welfare in Western post-industrial states, displacement, American political development and citizenship. She was a Fulbright scholar at the Centre for Research on Ethnic Relations at the University of Warwick in 1995, a Fulbright scholar at the China University of Political Science and Law, a Fulbright senior specialist at Tongji University in Shanghai and a fellow at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia. She is the author of two books and numerous articles and the editor of a book and of a special issue of a journal.

Sterett completed her undergraduate studies at the University of California at San Diego and earned a doctorate in the jurisprudence and social policy program at the University of California, Berkeley.

On Feb. 18, the Office of the Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs announced four finalists for the position. In addition to Sterett, they are Barbara Risman of the University of Illinois at Chicago, Stephen Esquith of Michigan State University and Joseph S. Francisco of Purdue University.

For more on the Arts and Sciences dean search, click here.