Richard N. Aslin, dean of the University of Rochester's College of Arts and Science since 1991, has been named Vice Provost and Dean of the College -- a new position overseeing the departments of both the College of Arts and Science and College of Engineering and Applied Science.

"The strengths and experience Richard Aslin developed as dean of arts and science made him stand tall among a very strong field of candidates for the Dean of the College position," said Provost Charles Phelps. "We believe he is the right person at this time to lead the College."

"Richard Aslin has maintained the admiration and support of the faculty, and he holds strongly the important academic values that the Dean must have," said President Jackson. "I am confident he will serve the University well."

Aslin, who also is a professor in the College's Center for Visual Science, has been a Rochester faculty member since 1984. From 1988 to 1991, he was chair of the Department of Psychology. As a psychological researcher, Aslin studies how infants see and hear, and how their perceptual abilities change as they develop.

He has studied how infants who are still too young to speak learn to recognize words and meanings in human conversation. He also has investigated the ways in which infants develop visual depth and motion perception, and how they use their eyes to gather information about their surroundings.

Since 1978, his research on speech perception has been supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Since 1977, his research into the development of vision has been funded both by the National Science Foundation and by the National Eye Institute. In the 1988-89 academic year, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship to study perceptual development at Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

Before joining the Rochester faculty, he was a faculty member at Indiana University at Bloomington, taught at the University of Minnesota, and was a visiting scientist at the University of Washington's Regional Primate Research Center.

He holds a bachelor's degree from Michigan State University and a Ph.D. in child psychology from the University of Minnesota.

EDITORS: Aslin lives on Eastland Avenue in Brighton

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