Herbert A. Medina has been hired as the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS), effective July 1, according to University of Portland President Fr. Mark Poorman.
Medina, who will begin work in mid-July, was the associate dean for faculty/staff development and student success at the College of Science and Engineering at Loyola Marymount University. He was born in El Salvador and raised in Los Angeles, California.
“Dr. Medina will be a tremendous new addition to the College of Arts and Science and to the University,” Poorman said in a news release on Tuesday. “He is committed to a liberal arts core curriculum, academic excellence, experiential learning experiences, Catholic higher education, and so many more values shared by the UP community. He is particularly interested in diversity and in working on projects to increase the participation of historically underrepresented groups in mathematics and the sciences.”
The dean of CAS oversees the core liberal arts curriculum at UP and 15 departments offering 28 majors and 25 minors. Medina will take the place of former dean Michael Andrews, who left the University in the spring of 2017. Political Science professor Gary Malecha has filled in as interim dean this school year.
Medina earned his bachelor's degree at Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1985. In 1987, he earned an M.A. in Mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley and he completed his Ph.D., also at UC Berkeley, in 1992.
Medina has given several presentations and written scholarly articles on the lack of diversity in mathematics undergraduate research.
