Letter from the Dean

	Ron Irving

After 25 years at the UW—as a faculty member, department chair, and divisional dean—I became interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences on July 1. I am honored and humbled that Provost Wise asked me to take on this responsibility. In my first letter as interim dean, I’d like to share how I arrived at this point and why I am looking forward to the many challenges ahead.

I fell in love with mathematics as a child, after an early fling with astronomy, and decided that I would be a mathematician despite my limited understanding of what this meant. Years later I did become a mathematician, but not without a few detours along the way.

In my teenage years I pursued a variety of passions, from bridge to 20th century American fiction to rock music. In college, in addition to studying mathematics and physics, I took courses in religion, politics, music, philosophy, and psychology that inspired me to major in mathematics and philosophy. I was especially fortunate to take a course by the political philosopher John Rawls just as his seminal book A Theory of Justice was published. By my junior year, I was spending more time on philosophy than mathematics.

I began to consider graduate studies in philosophy, but participation in an undergraduate research program got me back on the mathematical track.
For many years after that I put other disciplines aside and devoted much of my energy to mathematical research and to teaching. But when I became director of the Mathematics Department’s graduate program in 1990, I began to focus on the concrete situations facing people rather than the abstract, and beautiful, objects of mathematics. As director, I had to make tough decisions that would affect people’s lives. I found that I was able to do so, and to bring about some good. The decisions I make as a dean may be on a larger scale, but they are no more difficult and no more important.

The insights I acquired in working with people came to inform my teaching. In 1996, I began to teach some of the department’s courses for math majors who intend to become secondary math teachers. Rather than primarily lecturing, I focused class time on actively engaging the students in mathematical thinking, so that they could learn to read, write, and talk about mathematics as part of a community of learners.

After I served as director of the graduate program, other administrative duties followed: chair of the department’s hiring committee, coordinator of the department’s strategic planning effort, department chair, and finally divisional dean of natural sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Through all these experiences, I have come to realize that while I love mathematics, I also enjoy helping people achieve their goals. This too has its roots in my undergraduate years: after a less-than-stellar year as a member of freshman crew, I served for the next three years as a manager of men’s heavyweight crew, eventually spending more time supporting the needs of the team than studying mathematics or philosophy. As department chair, divisional dean, and now interim dean, I once again have such a role.

In serving as a divisional dean, I have enjoyed learning about and promoting the teaching and research within our 11 science departments, as well as the multidisciplinary work being done within the college and in collaboration with other UW schools and colleges. I look forward to expanding my horizons even farther as interim dean. Indeed, leading the College brings me full circle, since my own undergraduate studies were in the tradition of the liberal arts.

During my four years in the Dean’s Office, I have had the wonderful opportunity to work closely with and learn from Dean David Hodge. He is a powerful advocate for the importance of a liberal arts education and the essential role in such an education of student-centered, active learning. I will continue to pursue the initiatives introduced under his visionary leadership.

I am eager to learn more about the arts, the humanities, and the social sciences as I reacquaint myself with subjects I studied long ago. And I look forward to working with the people at the heart of this college—its faculty, staff, students, alumni, and friends. Please feel free to contact me about issues that concern you. Together we will continue to strengthen Arts and Sciences’ exceptional offerings.

Ron Irving
Interim Dean
rsi@u.washington.edu

[Summer 2006 - Table of Contents]