
Robbin D. Crabtree, dean of the LMU Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts, will conclude a decade of dedicated service at the completion of the 2023-24 academic year. After a sabbatical, she will rejoin the faculty as professor in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies.
“Since joining LMU as BCLA dean and professor of women’s and gender studies in 2014, Dr. Crabtree has championed a liberal arts education as the driver of personal and societal transformation, and cultivated interdisciplinary academic connections and collaborations across the schools and colleges,” said Thomas Poon, Ph.D., executive vice president and provost. “BCLA’s role in providing all our students with a broad undergraduate experience rich in the humanities and social sciences is essential to LMU’s distinctive heritage and mission.”
“I am proud and grateful to have led this vibrant community of world-class teacher-scholars, dedicated staff, and extraordinary students,” said Crabtree. “Together we have navigated countless challenges, including a global pandemic, and have been able to achieve many of our ambitious goals. We are more committed to the values of interdisciplinary liberal arts learning, more student-centered, more diverse, more adaptable and innovative, and more responsive to the world around us and its needs. After 15 years as an academic dean at two Jesuit universities, next year is the right time to wrap up my administrative work and return to the joys of full-time teaching and scholarship. I have every confidence that the team in the Dean’s Suite and our amazing faculty and department chairs will ensure the next dean can carry on this important work and realize further aspirations as articulated in our unit-level plan.”
Dean Crabtree has led with the belief that shared governance is the bedrock of academic operations, which she has worked tirelessly to make more effective, efficient, transparent, and sustainable. During her first year as dean, she worked closely with BCLA’s Shared Governance Implementation Group to establish its By-Laws and Governance Document, the College Council, and college committees. Significant initiatives have resulted from this work, including the launch of BCLA comms initiatives in 2015, the establishment of the BCLA Advising Center in 2016, the development of BCLA’s Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan in 2019, and in 2021, BCLA’s new unit-level plan: Creating the World We Want to Live in through Liberal Arts in Action.
Under Dean Crabtree’s leadership, BCLA successfully completed academic reviews of all 22 bachelor’s degree programs, five master’s degree-granting programs, and many of its minor programs, resulting in countless curricular and pedagogical improvements spearheaded by the faculty. BCLA also launched several new degree-granting programs including international relations, environmental studies, and journalism, as well as new interdisciplinary minors in bioethics, Chinese, health and society, and peace and justice studies. New academic departments were formed in Asian and Asian American Studies, Urban and Environmental Studies, and Journalism. Dean Crabtree spearheaded the growth and strengthening of the departments of African American Studies, Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies, and Women’s and Gender Studies to ensure all LMU students have access to courses that foreground our commitment to inclusivity, equity, diversity, and justice grounded in deep study of lived experiences, material histories, structural analysis, and hands-on engagement with contemporary issues and communities.
In partnership with the BCLA senior directors of development and colleagues in University Advancement, Dean Crabtree has raised nearly $40 million for scholarships, faculty recruitment and retention, and program enrichment, with significant progress toward an ambitious Campaign goal. She was also instrumentally involved in the successful application for a Phi Beta Kappa chapter at LMU, in which she is now a founding member.
Through intentional fundraising and budget reallocation, Dean Crabtree has been successful in growing opportunities for all students, regardless of financial circumstances, to engage in high-impact practices as part of their curriculum. These high-touch, transformative experiences abound in BCLA, including learning communities, global immersion courses, community-engaged teaching and learning, research and capstones, and more. In collaboration with Career and Professional Development, Dean Crabtree launched BCLA Career Chats and other opportunities for liberal arts students to explore the wide range of career pathways awaiting them. As a result, BCLA students consistently have a 98-100 percent employment and grad school rate, as measured six months after graduation.
“Dean Robbin Crabtree’s impact on the BCLA cannot be overstated,” said Brad Elliott Stone, associate dean for faculty, graduate education, and shared governance, and professor of philosophy. “Her dedication to the liberal arts as the heart of a Jesuit education, her proactivity in hiring and retaining a diverse faculty – even prior to LMU’s recent DEI efforts – and her commitment to shared governance have made the BCLA and LMU as a whole a stronger, more efficient institution.”
Working closely with each of BCLA’s departments, Dean Crabtree has hired over 30 percent of the current BCLA tenure-line faculty, enhancing the faculty’s scholarly excellence, diversity, and interdisciplinarity while also maintaining the presence of Jesuits in the BCLA classroom. A consummate budget strategist, she has decreased reliance on part-time faculty by growing the size of BCLA’s full-time faculty. Dean Crabtree has expanded faculty development support through her fundraising efforts and partnerships with the Global Policy Institute, the Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Center for the Study of Los Angeles, and LMU’s nascent Media, Arts and a Just Society initiative. Dean Crabtree has focused on supporting BCLA faculty across each rank for whole career success and satisfaction with initiatives such as cohort gatherings and co-mentoring, faculty learning communities, writing retreats, and engagement with the National Center for Faculty Diversity and Development along with other national faculty development workshops and programs. She has stewarded nearly 100 successful tenure and promotion cases as Dean of BCLA.
“I owe the success of these initiatives and accomplishments to the support and hard work of the indefatigable professional staff in the BCLA Dean’s Office; close collaboration with BCLA department chairs, program directors, and committees; and the dedication of the wider BCLA faculty and staff who are committed to academic excellence, student success, community well-being, and LMU’s mission and heritage,” said Crabtree. “This has been an extraordinary chapter in my academic career, and I have loved being part of this community.”
Cultivating and supporting faculty leadership has been a signature emphasis of Dean Crabtree, including creating the current faculty associate dean program, enhanced department chair training and development, and her close personal mentoring of faculty at LMU, across the AJCU, and at other institutions around the country in their discernment toward administrative roles and careers.
Her leadership and impact have gone well beyond the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts through her service on the Deans Council, the Provost’s Planning Council, the Institutional Examen Committee, LMU’s Strategic Plan implementation team, and on several administrative search committees, where she is known to be a frank and impassioned advocate for the faculty, the Core Curriculum, and the imperative of advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism.
“As Dr. Crabtree enters her final year as dean of BCLA and before she heads out on sabbatical at the end of the next academic year, please take the opportunity to thank her for her decade of leadership,” said Poon.
Crabtree earned her Ph.D. and master’s degrees in speech communication from the University of Minnesota and her bachelor’s degree from UC Santa Barbara. Her research and teaching interests include international media and intercultural communication, service-learning theory and practice, gender studies and feminist pedagogy. She is eager to teach first-year students about related topics through LMU’s First Year Seminar and Rhetorical Arts programs.