Professor of art education and African American studies and interim director of Penn State's School of Visual Arts B. Stephen Carpenter II has been named as the new dean for the university's College of Arts and Architecture.

The announcement follows the retirement of former dean Barbara O. Korner, who led the school from 2007 until June 30, 2019. 

Carpenter earned a fine arts degree in visual arts from Slippery Rock University in 1987, a master of education from Penn State in 1989, and a doctoral degree in art education, also from Penn State, in 1996. In two decades since, he has held tenure-track faculty positions in art and art education at Texas A&M University, Virginia Commonwealth University, and Old Dominion University, among many other academic and professional accomplishments and endeavors, Penn State News reports. 

The College of Arts and Architecture Carpenter will now lead is home to 1,225 undergraduate and 265 graduate students, and features academic programs in architecture, landscape architecture, graphic design, art history, art education, visual arts, theatre, and music. 

Describing the wide-ranging nature of the College's offerings amid his new role, Carpenter told Penn State News, “I am eager to take on the challenge and responsibility of being the dean of the college,” said Carpenter. “The college is defined by the complexity and breadth of disciplinary engagements that reside within the range of arts and design fields. It is this very complexity and breadth that renders my role as dean a desirable challenge and a logical next step, given my interests and vision for what the arts and design can offer to a large research institution [Penn State], and to contemporary society at this historical moment."

He added, “As a two-time alumnus, to be asked to return and to join the faculty and then to be selected to be interim director of SoVA was honor enough, to have my Alma Mater want me back,” said Carpenter. “But to be the dean of the college from which I graduated twice, it’s a great honor. This moment marks a defining point in the history of the college, a moment framed by renewed fiscal security and primed for change and growth, as indicated by new leadership in Art History, Theatre, Graphic Design, The Stuckeman School, and the Palmer Museum of Art, and soon in Landscape Architecture."

Carpenter will assume the role of dean on January 1, 2020.