On April 24, 2025, Provost Mary Clark announced that the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences would receive a new dean, Dr. Sahara Byrne, who will take the place of the current acting dean, Dr. Rachel A. Walsh. Dr. Byrne currently serves as the senior associate dean at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University.
Byrne started her college career at New York University at the Tisch School of the Arts as a film and television major and graduated in 1993. She proceeded to get both her master’s and her doctorate degrees in communications from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2004 and 2007, respectively.
Byrne was drawn to the commitment to deliver excellence by the CAHSS faculty and staff.
“I wanted to spend the next stage of my career supporting uniquely human expressions of creativity, the study of human existence, and deepening our understanding of how we, as humans, relate to one another now and across time,” Byrne said.
She expressed her desire to be a part of a community that values collaborating and showing up for each other.
Byrne described the interview for the dean position as a multi-staged and appropriately rigorous process. She described her interactions with the search committee composed of dedicated staff and faculty as “…both exciting and frank.”
“DU is one of the greatest institutions in the world, and like all other institutions of higher ed, we must continue to push ourselves to show up with the energy required to innovate if we want to remain so,” she explained.
She also expressed appreciation that DU acknowledged their difficulties as an institution over the past years and the uncertainties for the future, but they emphasized their drive to focus on the institution’s mission despite the bumps on the road.
Bryne’s goals for her dean tenure are broad. She aims to attract and fulfill the needs of a new generation of students and to recruit as well as retain the best faculty and staff. Byrne wants to cultivate a culture of trust within CAHSS and one of connection with alumni to further support DU’s mission of innovation. She plans to meet this goal by developing one-on-one relationships with students, staff, and faculty through one-on-one meetings this upcoming summer.
When acknowledging the recent CAHSS staff layoffs, Dr. Byrne asked that DU community members reconsider the idea of reconstruction, as all universities have dealt with a reconstruction of some sort; the institution she’s coming from experienced a remodeling similar to DU’s 8 years ago.
“The restructuring followed a national trend toward staffing around functional areas. After the kinks are worked out, it will work,” she explained.
Byrne continued to explain that we’ve “got to do it together” now more than ever to overcome difficulties. To her, the role as dean means she is committed to supporting the process until success is reached. Byrne explained that staffing functional areas helps with staff retention and career advancement, which is critical for the success of college culture. However, she also recognizes the challenge of needing to train faculty in some self-service systems and the time it takes to adjust.
Byrne also recognized the effects the layoffs have had on the CAHSS community.
“The college is still hurting in many ways from the layoffs because CAHSS is a caring community. The way to prevent layoffs is to focus on making our college a place where students want to enroll, excellent scholarship and creative works are generated,” Byrne said.
