Steven Taylor, professor and chair of the political science department, has been appointed to be the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
Taylor has been a member of the Troy faculty since 1998, starting out as an assistant professor of political science, and has served as chair of the department since 2012.
“I look forward to working with the chairs and faculty of the college to work on all of our shared goals,” Taylor said.
The position had been vacant since the death of former dean James Rinehart in May 2015. Bill Grantham, professor of social sciences, had been serving as the interim dean.
“I am looking forward to helping get the college on track after a little uncertainty this year and working on the things that we are good at, and hoping to enhance our scholarly reputation that I think we deserve,” Taylor said.
One of Taylor’s immediate focuses as dean will be to get the School of Science and Technology operating properly.
The school, which officially began in the spring of 2015, encompasses the departments of biological sciences, chemistry and physics, mathematics and geomatics, and computer science.
The school is currently in its early stages of development, and according to Taylor, the university is pursuing some grants and coordinating events to get it up and running in the near future.
Taylor also said that he will continue to teach one graduate course per semester from now on, but not undergraduate classes.
“I will miss the undergraduates, but that’s the plan at the moment,” he said.
A new chair for the political science department will be selected in the coming weeks.
Taylor received his Ph.D. in government from the University of Texas in Austin and received his bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Irvine.
He has authored and contributed to several books and scholarly publications, including his 2009 book “Voting Amid Violence: Electoral Democracy in Colombia” and the 2014 “A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective.”
Taylor is a former president of the Alabama Political Science Association and is a member of the Latin American Studies Association, American Political Science Association, Southern Political Science Association and Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies.
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