NewsRelease

Dr. Timothy Johnston Named Arts & Sciences Dean at UNCG
 

Dr. Johnston

GREENSBORO – Dr. Timothy D. Johnston, a professor of psychology at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, has been named dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, effective April 1.

The appointment was announced by UNCG Provost Edward Uprichard. Johnston succeeds Dr. Walter Beale, who has held the position since 1990. Beale has returned to full-time teaching and research in the UNCG Department of English. Johnston has been serving as interim dean since the start of the 2002-03 year.

A reception to honor Johnston on his appointment will be held on Friday, April 4, from 9:30-11 a.m. in the Virginia Dare Room of the Alumni House.

"Tim Johnston has demonstrated throughout his career that he is a very able academic administrator,” said  Uprichard. “He has the confidence of both the faculty and staff in the College of Arts and Sciences, and the academic leadership of the University. The College will move forward in significant ways under his leadership. I look forward to working with him as the College and the University strive to achieve their 2008 goals. He is the right person for this position."

As dean, he will be responsible for the administration of UNCG’s largest academic unit, which is home to 20 academic departments with approximately 400 faculty, six special programs in liberal studies and the University Honors Program. The college plays the central role in providing a general education foundation for all undergraduates. It also offers master’s degrees in 22 areas and doctorates in four areas.

A faculty member at UNCG since 1983, Johnston rose through the ranks, gaining tenure and promotion to associate professor in 1988 and promotion to professor in 1992. He has taught courses at all levels in the Department of Psychology, from freshman psychology to advanced graduate seminars. He has also taught in the University Honors Program, Residential College, and the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies program.

He has held several administrative positions at UNCG. These have included director of graduate studies for the Department of Psychology (1989-90), associate dean of the college and director of its Center for Critical Inquiry in the Liberal Arts (1990-97), head of the Department of Psychology (1997-2002), and interim dean of the college (2002-03). He served as chair of the Program Planning Committee for UNCG’s new Science Instructional Building, which will open this summer, and as a member of the Campus Master Plan Update Committee.

Johnston’s scientific research has focused on the development and evolution of behavior and he has published more than 20 book chapters and peer-reviewed articles on those topics. His recent theoretical work deals with the contribution of gene activity to the development of behavior and psychological processes. This work has been published in Psychological Review, the leading theoretical journal in psychology, and presented in invited talks to the Center for Development Science at UNC Chapel Hill and the Workshop on Behavior Genetics at Dalhousie University, Canada. He has served as a reviewer for numerous professional journals and as a member of the physiology and ethology grant review panel for the National Science Foundation. In addition to his theoretical research, Johnston also publishes on the history of psychology, particularly the history of animal psychology in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

A 1970 graduate of the University of Edinburgh in ecological science, Johnston enrolled in the graduate program in zoology at the University of Wisconsin to study animal behavior with the late John T. Emlen Jr. He received his master’s degree in zoology in 1974 and his Ph.D. in 1978 at the University of Connecticut. Although his master’s and doctoral research dealt with the behavior of non-human primates, he switched his research focus to other species after receiving his doctorate. He then spent four years as a postdoctoral associate working on the development of behavior in ducklings with Gilbert Gottlieb, first at the Research Branch of the N.C. Division of Mental Health in Raleigh, and then in the UNCG Department of Psychology.

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