At the beginning of 2012, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences welcomed its new dean, Susan Beatty. Beatty, who hails from Atlanta and taught at universities in California and Colorado, was originally concerned if Portland State would be the right fit. But during her first visit, when she met with students, faculty and people in the Portland community, she knew it was where she was meant to be.
Beatty began her undergraduate studies at Emory College in Atlanta then migrated north to upstate New York for her graduate degree at Cornell University. After receiving her degree, she headed west to teach history at the University of California, Los Angeles.
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Susan Beatty finds her place in a diverse college
At the beginning of 2012, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences welcomed its new dean, Susan Beatty. Beatty, who hails from Atlanta and taught at universities in California and Colorado, was originally concerned if Portland State would be the right fit. But during her first visit, when she met with students, faculty and people in the Portland community, she knew it was where she was meant to be.
Beatty began her undergraduate studies at Emory College in Atlanta then migrated north to upstate New York for her graduate degree at Cornell University. After receiving her degree, she headed west to teach history at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Courtesy of PSU CommunicationsSusan Beatty joins the PSU staff as the new CLAS dean.
However, she found that UCLA was missing a key component—a symbiotic relationship to its surroundings. “There was literally no connection to the community or to the city. It was this huge university, embedded in this huge city, with almost no recognition that it was in a city. It was very exciting and stimulating in some levels but a little bit discouraging in others,” Beatty said.
Beatty spent nine years in Los Angeles then relocated to the University of Colorado, where she spent the following 22 years. She taught geography and had the opportunity to do research in Australia, New Zealand and the edge of Tibet in the Sichuan province.
“I worked for a while with some Tibetan nomadic groups and rode yaks to see where the nomadic groups lived,” Beatty said. “We were up 18,000 feet and I wasn’t quite sure I wasn’t going to die.”
In her last five years at Colorado she moved into an administrative role as the associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
“I oversaw 13 departments, 368 tenure-track faculty and 1,200 graduate students,” Beatty said in her letter posted on the Portland State CLAS website.
Beatty is optimistic for the road ahead, running PSU’s largest college. She understands the challenges, one of which is the sheer size of the college. According to the most recent inload enrollment report for fall of 2011, the CLAS represented 38 percent of the 25,883 students, with an inload enrollment of 9,912.
“How do I get to know the students?” Beatty asked. “It’s the challenge and the beauty of the college. The beauty is that we’re so diverse. We have departments of world languages through communication, economics, sociology, psychology, biology, chemistry, environmental science and management. It’s a huge range of different disciplines. No where else on campus can you get that breadth of pure basic knowledge in a lot of different things. It’s the challenge because it is diverse, what fits one thing doesn’t fit another. What I would do to enrich a world language department is not the same as I would in a biology department.”
PSU President Wim Wiewel echoed Beatty’s outlook. “The challenges of liberal arts and sciences are considerable as are the opportunities.” Wiewel said. You want someone that is going to be there for a while and who brings a lot of experience in a college like this. Sue (Beatty) brings all the skills that we need and then some, so I think she’s going to be great.”
Among Beatty’s goals as the dean of CLAS, student success is paramount. Identifying some of the stumbling blocks to success is critical, including reaching out to students who are having difficulties in courses that are required to move on in a major.
“Somehow, if we can provide extra opportunities, study groups, if we can do it with conjunction with graduate students or senior undergrads it’s kind of a win-win. At CSU we used senior undergrads to conduct these as part of a teacher-training program,” Beatty said.
One of her chief interests is working toward helping the faculty gain greater opportunities for faculty research.
Beatty has recently been studying invasive species, including plants that are occupying foreign terrain and whether or not there are problems in wilderness areas. PSU’s strong focus on research is part of the reason she wasexcited to join the Portland State faculty.
“This is a terrific faculty, they do a lot of amazing things. Having the research and scholarly creative work…it’s creating new knowledge, coming up with a new way to look at things. These are the faculty that are always teaching. So you get an enriched education because you’re hearing about this thinking hot off the presses, that’s pretty cool,” Beatty said.
As she becomes more immersed in the PSU community, Beatty’s excitement increases.
“I’m incredibly impressed and surprised in how open everybody is that I’ve talked to here. Everyone is willing to work together, and I think that is so visionary,” Beatty said. “If we’re going to create better student success, better research, we have to do it together going forward. It’s surprising, refreshing; this is the most unique place I have been with respect to those connections.”
