With a new school year upon us comes many new and exciting changes. Some are obvious like the new renovations around campus, but others not so much. This year Ashland University has welcomed three new deans to campus to represent the College of Arts and Sciences, eAshland and the College of Education.

Katherine Brown: College of Arts and Sciences

One of the biggest dean changes on campus is for the College of Arts and Sciences.
Originally, the role was fulfilled by former Interim Dean Daniel McDonald, but now the role is being filled by Dr. Katherine Brown. Brown comes from Walsh University where she originally served as the Dean for the School of Arts and Sciences.
Brown received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History from Florida State University and received her Master’s and Ph.D. in Art History from Indiana University.
She says that her role here is to promote the liberal art curriculum and is devoted to preserving the core curriculum ranging from math to history to the natural sciences.
“The courses in the College of Arts and Sciences are a foundation for an education,“ Brown said. “We want to instill lifelong learning.”
Brown is infatuated with being a lifelong learner and being able to see the connections between different disciplines like biology and history. Brown put it best in explaining that understanding history helps someone understand the history of biology and vice versa.
Brown explains that the courses in the college are to help prepare students in asking questions and backing them up with research.
Brown stated, “We are here to educate the whole person, and that can serve as a basis for a lifelong understanding of how we interpret facts.”
One of the biggest challenges the new Dean is working through is the recent sunsetting of various majors at Ashland University. Brown has a plan though to help keep some of these alive since lots of those majors that were cut had classes that were in the core.
“Certainly, I had inherited a set of circumstances,” Brown continued. “The way I look at this basically is that I can’t change the past, so what we can do is take what we have in terms of curriculum, but also facilities.”
Brown is looking at all the options to help preserve the discipline by using the resources that are here on campus like minors and certificate programs.
“I want to make pathways for students to be obstacle free,” she added.
Brown plans to work around the sunsetting of majors while looking to create opportunities for students to take classes within those disciplines.
Brown is looking forward to being the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
“I want to be challenged and this is sufficiently challenging,” she added.
Brown expresses a desire to be part of the solution to the problem and to have meaningful conversations. She is excited to learn about the different programs in the college and wants to be able to support the faculty and students in those different programs.

Lisa Vernon-Dotson: College of Education

The Dean for the College of Education was announced during the spring semester of the previous academic year and is being filled by Dr. Lisa Vernon-Dotson. She received her undergraduate from the University of Akron and received her masters from Hampton University.
She then went on to receive her doctorate at the College of William and Mary. Vernon-Dotson has previously been faculty at Hampton University and Duquesne University.
Before arriving at Ashland University, she was the Associate Dean of Education at Rowan University. Vernon-Dotson doesn’t want to change too much within the college because she wants to first be more intimate with the programs within the college.
“I really need to become intimate with the programs already here because Ashland is known for teacher education. I don’t want to change things that are working, I want to build on the history that Ashland already has,” Vernon-Dotson said.
Her goal is to mainly focus on the partnerships in the college with students and faculty. Lately, there has been a teacher shortage across the country.
“Across the nation, Colleges of Education enrollments are dropping more drastically than college students… there are more students steering away from education,” she continued.
The goal for Vernon-Dotson to help the College of Education through this nation-wide teacher shortage is to focus on the Ashland University motto of Accent on the Individual. This means that Vernon-Dotson wants to try to reach out to potential students directly.
“We are going to be reaching out to them personally. I am going to try to recruit faculty to start calling [potential students],” she added.
This will hopefully allow for the College of Education to reach out to potential students early showing the university motto of Accent on the Individual.
Vernon-Dotson is looking forward to this upcoming school year and is excited to meet all the students and faculty that make up the College of Education.

Shawn Orr: eAshland

This college is a little different from the others on campus. Formally known as the College of Online and Adult Studies, that name dissolved in October 2021 and was officially changed to eAshland.
The dean that is now filling this role is definitely no stranger to campus and was even last year’s Interim Dean of eAshland, Shawn Orr.
Orr was selected as the dean after the university did a national search for a new dean, but Orr, as she stated, “fell in love with the process” and knew this is the place she wanted to be.
Orr is also part of the communication studies department as an associate professor and has over 30 years of experience in higher education. Some of her favorite classes that she has taught on campus are Communication 101 and the Public Relations Campaigns class.
eAshland isn’t your typical college in the sense of catering to mainly undergraduate students.
“eAshland, in the mission, is really about providing educational experiences from high school through retirement so a lot of what we do is not for credit, but is still academic in nature,” Orr said.
eAshland does lots of the workforce development which is where people earn their certifications and four credit areas like College Credit Plus.
“One of the key roles that eAshland does is that they help and grow online programs in the academic colleges, so a lot of it is about building bridges and supporting our faculty,” Orr added.
eAshland is there to mainly support the growth of academic programs so that everyone has access to them.
“We are here to support the growth of online learning,” Orr added.
eAshland is focused on delivering online education that is accessible to everyone.
Orr is excited about being the new dean of eAshland this coming year. She is looking forward to working with the people that make eAshland what it is.
“Hands down the people, like the people of eAshland are amazing, they are positive, and excited about serving the university,” she concluded.
Orr is planning on continuing to grow and expand eAshland and to continue to work with her team.