Manderscheid to head UNL's College of Arts and Sciences

David Manderscheid, chair and professor of mathematics at the University of Iowa, has accepted appointment as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The appointment, pending approval by the University of Nebraska Board of Regents, was announced by Barbara Couture, UNL's senior vice chancellor for academic affairs.

"David brings a record of outstanding achievements and his leadership promises to advance the College of Arts and Sciences in numerous ways," Couture said. "For example, under his leadership, Iowa's Department of Mathematics raised its national profile and its external funding, updated and energized its graduate program and increased the number of undergraduate math majors by providing opportunities for students to work across disciplines. This innovative thinking excites us as we work toward improving an already-great college."

Manderscheid said UNL's commitment to undergraduate education was attractive to him.

"The University of Nebraska-Lincoln is an excellent university that places a high value on undergraduate education," he said. "I have known members of the Mathematics Department at UNL for may years and have been impressed by the things they have done. Their work to bring more women into mathematics, which led to a the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring in 1998, served as an inspiration to us at Iowa in our efforts to bring more minorities into mathematics, efforts which led to a Presidential Award for us in 2004."

Manderscheid said his immediate goals include efforts to promote research within the college.

"The College of Arts and Sciences at UNL is in excellent shape. Students are getting an outstanding education. My goal is to help make the college even better," he said. "Among the initiatives that I intend to explore are ways to further raise the research profile of the college and to provide undergraduates even more opportunities for discovery learning -- study abroad, research with faculty, and community engagement."

Manderscheid will assume the deanship on Aug 1 of UNL's largest college (4,334 of UNL's 22,106 students in the fall semester of 2006). He will be a tenured professor in the Department of Mathematics.

Manderscheid earned a B.S. from Michigan State University and a Ph.D. from Yale University. His academic research is in representation theory with applications to number theory. He has held visiting positions at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley and at the University of Paris. Prior to assuming the Iowa department chair in 2001, he spent four years as director of the department's graduate program. He chairs the Mathematical Association of America Committee on Graduate Students.

Manderscheid was awarded the Outstanding Mentor Award for the Mathematical, Physical, and Engineering Sciences from the University of Iowa Graduate College in 2002. In 2004 he received the Marion L. Huit Award from the University of Iowa for his teaching, research, and service to students.

His wife, Susan Lawrence, is a historian of medicine at Iowa; she will be a tenured associate professor in UNL's Department of History. Manderscheid's personal interests include cooking, gardening, and restoring and riding his 1976 Masi, a racing bicycle. He also enjoys exercise, reading, movies, and watching sports.

Manderscheid will succeed Richard Hoffmann, dean since February 2001. Hoffmann announced in September 2006 his intention to return to a faculty position in biological sciences.

CONTACTS: Barbara Couture, Sr. Vice Chancellor, Academic Affairs, (402) 472-3751
David Manderscheid, Chair and Professor of Mathematics, University of Iowa