Alice Taylor-Colbert selected as dean at Lander University
Greenwood Today
September 7, 2010
Is it possible to be a people person, yet hold people to a high standard? Dr. Alice Taylor-Colbert, Lander University’s new dean of the College of Arts and Humanities, would say yes.
She believes in “letting people get to know you, and letting them know that you value their work,” but also admits she has high expectations of her faculty – and isn’t afraid of letting them know it. Asked if she is tough, she said, “yes, I am, but you have to add ‘fair.’”
Taylor-Colbert comes to Lander from the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith, where she worked for five years as a professor of history and chair of the History, Geography, Political Science, Philosophy and Religious Studies Department.
She was instrumental in U.A.-Fort Smith’s conversion from a community college to a four-year institution, a process which was both trying and ultimately rewarding.
“The most difficult thing was to walk into a situation where the faculty did not want me there, and to turn that around,” she said.
She had already turned around a situation at her alma mater, Shorter University, in Rome, Ga., where stipulations had been placed on the School of Education by the Georgia Professional Standards Commission (PSC).
