Pending the decision of the Board of Trustees today, Jacqueline Jones Royster will be named executive dean of the Colleges of Arts and Sciences and senior vice provost of Ohio State, with the positions taking effect immediately.

After a national search conducted by what Executive Vice President and Provost Barbara Snyder called a broadly represented search committee, Royster was chosen as a finalist for the position in which she had been serving as interim dean.

“Jacqueline Royster was the only internal candidate that met with faculty, staff and students,” Snyder said. “She received strong approval among all of the groups, I think because they believe she will be a great leader and an articulate advocate of arts and sciences as a collective entity.”

Snyder said she believes the vote will be unanimous because she has the confidence of the university leadership, including the deans of the five colleges of arts and sciences.

Royster said she came to OSU after 16 years of teaching at Spelman College in Atlanta, where she earned her bachelor’s degree. She said she received both her master’s and doctorate degrees in English from the University of Michigan.

Royster served in a program where she could examine language practices when people write.

After teaching and being an administrator at Spelman College, Royster said she was invited to join the OSU Department of English as an associate professor specializing in rhetoric and composition. She was also asked to be the director of OSU’s Writing Center.

Royster said she spent some time as dean of the College of Humanities, then was asked to be interim dean of arts and sciences when Executive Dean Michael Hogan left OSU.

“I decided to go on and apply for the job and (today) I will be named for the position,” Royster said. “It is an exciting time in Ohio State history in that it gives us an opportunity to think about how we can bring five really strong colleges together to try to see what synergies that might be created for research, teaching, and the well-being of higher education in Ohio.”

Undergraduate Student Government President Aftab Pureval said he is very confident in the appointment of Royster.

“I think she is capable of taking new initiatives and making (the arts and sciences) successful,” Pureval said. “I hope she is in support of examining current undergraduate requirements, such as (general education curriculum courses) and the number of hours required to graduate, as the majority of GECs are located in the arts and sciences.”

“(Royster) will be a good leader, taking arts and sciences in good directions, such as developing interdisciplinary programs and new ways for faculty to approach curriculum,” said Jack Cooley, an assistant executive dean.

Cooley said he thinks Royster will create an overarching sense of the value of arts and sciences that will benefit all of the colleges.

Snyder said she has talked to all of the deans in the arts and sciences about starting the new program.

“The implementation of these programs should benefit students and facilitate the collaborative work of the faculty,” she said.

Royster said as executive dean she has been and will continue to work very closely with the deans of the five colleges included in the collective entity.

“A priority of the Colleges of Arts and Sciences is to encourage students and faculty to think in terms of multidisciplinary teaching and research,” Royster said. “While we are five distinctive colleges, we are working for common concerns like undergraduate education, interdisciplinary, cross-disciplinary and multidisciplinary education.”