Kristine L. Blair, professor and former chair of English at Bowling Green State University, has been selected the new dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at Youngstown State University.
“Dr. Blair’s administrative and teaching experience at a public university in Ohio, as well as her passion for writing and academic scholarship, make her an excellent match to head our College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences,” said Martin Abraham, YSU provost and vice president for Academic Affairs.
“We look forward to Kristine’s arrival on campus and her leadership for this important academic unit.”
Blair will start the new position on May 16. The appointment must be formally approved by the Board of Trustees in March.
CLASS, with nearly 1,900 students, consists of nine academic departments and seven interdisciplinary programs, offering 20 majors. Blair replaces Jane Kestner, who has been serving as interim dean of the college since Shearle Furnish left the post in the summer of 2014.
Blair earned a bachelor’s degree in Journalism in 1986 and a master’s degree in English in 1988 from California State University, Sacramento, and she received a PhD in English Rhetoric from Purdue University in 1994.
She was an assistant professor of English at Texas A&M University Corpus Christi before joining the English faculty at Bowling Green in 1996, rising to the rank of professor in 2006. She was chair of the English Department at Bowling Green from 2005 to 2014. Also at Bowling Green, she has served as acting director of the Rhetoric and Writing Doctoral Program, chair of the Faculty Senate, graduate coordinator in the English department, and associate director/faculty associate in the BGSU Center for Teaching, Learning and Technology.
She has presented dozens of workshops, forums and lectures, and has participated in extensive professional development and training activities, including times as a visiting scholar in Digital Media and Composition at Ohio State University in 2014-15. Blair’s research interests include gender and technology, computers and the teaching of writing, technology and faculty development, e-learning, online pedagogies, digital language and literacy, the politics of online communication, electronic portfolios, research methodologies and visual/media literacy.
Among her awards is the BGSU Faculty Senate Award for Leadership, BGSU Women of Distinction Award and the President’s Award for Collaborative Research with Graduate Students. She has authored three textbooks, edited two other books, and written dozens of articles, review essays, chapters and webtexts in peer-reviewed venues. She also is the editor of two journals:
Computers and Composition and its online companion journal,
Computers and Composition Online.
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