Long-Standing Faculty Join Dean’s Office

Two new associate deans joined the dean’s office in July, expanding the support and services offered to students and faculty within the college.

Jackie Krasas ‘87, associate professor of sociology and anthropology, is associate dean for interdisciplinary programs. She directed the women, gender and sexuality studies (WGSS) program from 2005 until 2014. As director of WGSS, she expanded the program from an undergraduate minor in 2005 to a program that now includes both an undergraduate major and an interdisciplinary graduate certificate. Her scholarship focuses on gender, race and employment inequality, masculinities, work and family, sexual harassment and nonstandard work. Her book, Temps: The Many Faces of the Changing Workplace, analyzes the rise in temporary employment and the experience of temporary workers in terms of race, gender, power and identity. Krasas is co-principal investigator and part of the leadership team for the Lehigh ADVANCE grant, “Building Community Beyond Academic Departments.” Her scholarship from the grant focuses on gender and interdisciplinary work in academia, particularly in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. Krasas received her Ph.D. in sociology with a specialty in gender studies from the University of Southern California.

“I have always enjoyed working in interdisciplinary spaces,” says Krasas. “They can be challenging but are also intellectually invigorating and rewarding. In CAS, we have a wealth of interdisciplinary programs that can benefit from my role through creating regular collaboration, shared problem-solving and institutional advocacy for those units and interdisciplinarity more generally. With regard to the international component of the new position, I will be working on behalf of students, faculty, programs and departments so that they may benefit from the vast array of international resources and opportunities that already exist at Lehigh. Equally important will be my role in facilitating and guiding the development of new, faculty-generated international collaborations. These initiatives, which may be pedagogical, creative and/or scholarly in focus, will be designed with the goal of being mutually beneficial to all cooperating institutions.”

Cameron Wesson, the Lucy G. Moses Distinguished Professor in the department of sociology and anthropology, is associate dean of undergraduate programs. Before arriving at Lehigh in 2011, he served as associate professor and chair of the department of anthropology at the University of Vermont (UVM). Prior to his tenure at UVM, he was associate professor of anthropology and director of graduate studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). His scholarly interests center on Native American architecture and community planning, non-Capitalist political economies, archaeological remote sensing and archaeometry. He is the author or co-editor of three books, with his most recent volume, Households and Hegemony, examining Native American responses to European colonization in the Deep South. He is presently developing a new archaeological research project addressing Iron Age hill forts in England and Wales. Wesson received both his Ph.D. and M.A. in anthropology from the University of Illinois and his B.A. in anthropology and B.S. in architecture and environmental studies from Auburn University.

“Although I’ve spent the majority of my career in departments with large graduate programs, I’ve always found my roles as an undergraduate teacher and mentor to be the most rewarding aspects of my career,” he says. “I was attracted to this position because of the established reputation of excellence for undergraduate education within CAS and because of the broader challenges facing undergraduate education. New technologies and learning assessment tools are transforming how we present information, engage our students and evaluate their mastery of key course concepts. Meanwhile, student concerns over educational debt and the anemic job market have forced many to question the relevance of a liberal arts education in the 21st century. I want to take on these issues as associate dean by empowering faculty to make full use of emerging pedagogies, finding new ways to engage students and developing a compelling case for why a broad-based liberal arts education is not only relevant, but an essential basis for employment in the global economy.”

Krasas and Wesson join Diane Hyland, senior associate dean for faculty and staff, and Garth Isaak, associate dean for research and graduate programs.

Story by Robert Nichols