Executive Dean, College of Arts and Sciences

Indiana University Bloomington

Position Description

Indiana University Bloomington, the flagship campus of Indiana University and a member of the Association of American Universities, invites nominations and applications for the next Executive Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

The College is the academic core of IU Bloomington. It provides the foundational liberal arts and sciences education for the campus, advances research and creative activity across the arts and humanities, social and historical sciences, and natural and mathematical sciences, and prepares students for lives of meaning, leadership, discovery, democratic engagement, and public contribution. As IU Bloomington continues to strengthen its standing among leading public research universities, the College will be central to every major ambition: student success, transformative research and creativity, service to Indiana and beyond, and the renewal of a broad liberal arts education for the world students are entering.

The next Executive Dean will lead the College at a moment of unusual importance. The College has deep historic strengths, a broad and talented faculty, strong student demand in many areas, and new momentum from major investments in high-potential fields including biosciences, quantum science, artificial intelligence, environment, health, and data-rich discovery. Recent Faculty 100 hires have seeded new talent and interdisciplinary strength across the College.

The College is ready for its next chapter, one that creates exciting opportunities to support growth and build on its many strengths. The College seeks a courageous leader who communicates with honesty and candor in the face of challenges. At the same time, the College must continue the hard work of financial sustainability, academic accountability, curricular renewal, and strategic investment in fields whose future demand, public value, and research impact must be made newly compelling.

This is one of the most consequential academic leadership roles at IU Bloomington. The successful candidate will bring top-scholar credibility, political judgment, operating discipline, and creativity in resource generation. The next Executive Dean must honor the College’s breadth while setting priorities clearly and helping the College move confidently toward its next era.

The College of Arts and Sciences is IU Bloomington’s largest and oldest academic unit. It is home to the core disciplines of the liberal arts and sciences and includes the Natural and Mathematical Sciences, the Social and Historical Sciences, and the Arts and Humanities. The College also includes the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture and Design, the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, and The Media School.

The College offers more than 225 undergraduate and graduate degrees across more than 70 academic departments and programs, three schools, and more than 50 research centers and institutes. It teaches thousands of undergraduate courses each year, supports instruction in more than 80 languages, and serves more than 30,000 IU Bloomington students through majors, graduate programs, general education, service courses, research opportunities, and experiential learning.

The College’s faculty include nationally and internationally recognized scholars, scientists, artists, teachers, and public intellectuals whose work shapes knowledge and creative practice across disciplines.

The College is also a major driver of IU Bloomington’s research strength and national reputation. Its faculty contribute to all four IUB 2030 research themes:
Aging, Environment, Human Side of AI/ML, and Applied…