Arts & Sciences Magazine

Stan Sclaroff understands the value of a liberal arts education because he sees how the liberal arts enhanced his own understanding of the world. An accomplished computer scientist, he majored in that subject at Tufts—as well as in English.“I loved both subjects very much from the start,” says Sclaroff, a professor of computer science. “In the end, it seems less important what majors I combined; instead, it’s the combining that mattered most. All the reading and learning about methods of critique in my English major honed my appreciation for good writing. It also led me to see and seek out the interconnectedness between contemporaneous movements in literature, politics, philosophy, science, and the arts—how different disciplines inform and feed each other.”

Sclaroff has been named dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, following a nationwide search. He served as dean ad interim during the 2018–2019 academic year. Sclaroff has been on the CAS faculty since 1995, and during that time he was associate dean of the faculty for mathematical and computational sciences. He also chaired the computer science department from 2007 to 2013.

Sclaroff sat down with arts&sciences to share his vision for the college.

arts&sciences: What is the first item on your to-do list?

Sclaroff: I have some ideas, but I’d like to hear what other people are thinking and come up with an agenda that represents the college, which is a truly diverse place. I’ve been lucky to be at BU for 24 years, and it’s been very exciting, in the year as interim dean, to learn more about all the different departments and programs. They’re all doing exciting, innovative, bold, brave work that has an impact on our students and the world.

The first step is to do a series of listening sessions with different constituencies within the college: the graduate school, the undergraduate programs, student life, and other offices, and alumni. I want to learn about their major ambitions, and what they see as important opportunities and challenges for the college as a whole.

After I’ve gone out and listened and collected ideas from people, then I will want to report back on what I think might be the priorities, and begin to talk about those.

Things are also running as we speak: we’re planning faculty searches for next year, and we’re thinking about the new Center for Computing & Data Sciences.

Why will the center—a new tower on Comm Ave, which will bring the mathematics and statistics and computer science departments under one roof—be so imperative to CAS, and BU more broadly?

Computer science and math and statistics are the major foundational departments that are going to be housed in that building, along with the cross-cutting new Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences and the Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering. Faculty in disciplines like religion, English, history of art and architecture, the natural sciences, and social sciences are already using data science techniques, so the center will help to amplify their research and enable them to answer questions at different scales.

Faculty members in the humanities, for instance, are looking at data to study artistic influence in Renaissance Italy and understand patterns in fiction.

While the data sciences center is a major initiative for CAS, it sounds as though you also intend to prioritize the humanities and social sciences.

The humanities and the social sciences could not be more important than they are at this very moment. When we look at training students, it’s crucial that they have the historical perspective, or the political perspective, or the behavioral science perspective when they look at solving today’s global challenges. It’s crucial to keep these things in their proper connectedness; you can’t disconnect from the fact that we are people. We have to understand human behavior through the lens of the social sciences, social structures, anthropology, philosophy and ethics—these combinations are so important; they enable us to be creative, to solve problems together, to collaborate.

The natural sciences also remain as crucial as ever to our future as humans. Some of today’s most pressing challenges and greatest opportunities require a deeper understanding of the nature of life and the physical universe, genetics, the brain, and human behavior.

What other priorities have risen to the surface so far?

We have an outstanding BU Center for the Humanities, and I would love to work toward forming an equivalent for the social sciences: a community for students and faculty who are working in those disciplines.

Another important one is experiential learning opportunities, especially for undergraduates—for students to bring their classroom learning into the context of the real world, where they solve problems. Bringing that experience back into the classroom with them enriches the experience for all the students in the class. And, it should be accessible to anyone; for example, the BU Marine Program in Belize should be accessible to anyone, irrespective of their financial means.

What do you do for fun, and how does it relate to your work?

I’ve been gardening since I was six years old, and I now have a community garden. I’m also an avid fan of different movements in visual arts and sculpture. I went to an exhibit recently of Andy Warhol’s paintings in New York. It spanned his lifetime, and it revealed the influence of his friends, who he consulted at different points in his career. They changed his direction; he was at a crossroads in his painting career where he could have gone in one direction in terms of his artistic style. But he chose a different direction because he was encouraged by his friends.

It’s so interesting to see the interactions between people—not just the works of art—to know who influenced an artist, who they were hanging out with, what parties they went to, and what poets or artists they knew. It’s richer within that context.

What kind of dean do you want to be?

I want to be a consultative leader who seeks input. CAS faculty members have dynamic, wonderful ideas, and I want to be able to connect them. I want to be a champion, an enabler for those creative faculty and students.