Hansen to serve second term as Dean of Social Sciences

John Mark Hansen, the Charles L. Hutchinson Distinguished Service Professor in Political Science and the College and one of the nation's leading scholars of American politics, has been appointed to a second five-year term as Dean of the Social Sciences Division.

"Under Mark's leadership, the Social Sciences Division continues to be a point of pride for the University, with new academic programs, initiatives in graduate education, and the successful recruitment and retention of exceptional faculty," noted President Zimmer and Provost Thomas Rosenbaum in an administrative memo.

"Mark is deeply committed to working with the social sciences faculty, department chairs and directors in defining new opportunities for the division, from infrastructure enhancements to interdisciplinary collaborations across the University, and we look forward to working with Mark and the division's faculty, students and staff to make these opportunities a reality," they added.

Hansen's accomplishments include guiding the creation of the Committee on Education as well as the move of the Committee on Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science into the Social Sciences Division.

He also has aided in the establishment of a new set of faculty-led centers, including the Chicago Center for Critical Theory, the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience, the Center for Health and Social Science (with the Biological Sciences Division and the National Opinion Research Center) and the Chicago Price Theory Initiative (now the Becker Center at the Graduate School of Business).

Hansen serves as the Chicago Principal Investigator on the National Science Foundation's "Great Lakes Alliance for Social Science," which aims to more effectively recruit and train under-represented minority students in the social sciences, and he has helped the Social Sciences Division create research relationships with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the Department of Homeland Security.

In 2003, he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received the 1995 Outstanding Book Award from the National Conference of Black Political Scientists for Mobilization, Participation and Democracy in America (1993) written with Steven Rosenstone.

Hansen's current research focuses on public opinion, public budgeting and politicians' inferences from the outcomes of elections.

Hansen also has served as Chair of the Political Science Department from 1995 to 1998, and he was appointed to the position of Associate Provost for Education and Research for the University in 1998. He joined the Chicago faculty in 1986.