Women’s and Gender Studies, Psychology Scholar Named Dean of Georgetown College

Rosario Ceballo, Ph.D., an interdisciplinary scholar with a demonstrated commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education, will join Georgetown as dean of Georgetown College and professor of psychology on January 1, 2022.

Ceballo currently serves as professor of psychology and women’s and gender studies and associate dean for the social sciences at the University of Michigan’s College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. From 2015-2018, she served as chair of Michigan’s Department of Women’s and Gender Studies.

“Dr. Ceballo is a celebrated interdisciplinary scholar whose research has examined community violence, families, culture, and gender through a psychological lens,” says Georgetown President John J. DeGioia. “We are deeply grateful that our community will have the opportunity to benefit from Dr. Ceballo’s extraordinary experience and expertise, and look forward to her leadership of the College.”

Interdisciplinary Academic Excellence

Ceballo’s scholarship examines the strengths and resilience of families living in poverty, with a focus on adolescents who experience community violence and women of color who face reproductive difficulties, such as infertility. She has published extensively across clinical, community, developmental and feminist psychology journals, including Developmental Psychology, Psychology of Violence and Psychology of Women Quarterly.

“As Georgetown strives to live its mission of ‘people for others,’ it is increasingly clear that progress requires multiple fields working together,” says Georgetown Provost Robert M. Groves. “Dr. Ceballo’s career is an exemplar of such interdisciplinary collaboration.”

At the University of Michigan, Ceballo led the establishment of interdisciplinary academic initiatives. She helped launch the Quantitative Methods in Social Sciences program, which encouraged students to solve socially pressing problems with large data sets and statistical tools. As chair of Women’s and Gender Studies, Ceballo responded to student interest by developing a new Gender and Health undergraduate major.

“As someone who has been jointly appointed in the Departments of Psychology and Women’s and Gender Studies, I have always approached my research from an interdisciplinary perspective, relying on both quantitative and qualitative methods,” says Ceballo. “I believe we can best confront our greatest social problems from a range of diverse perspectives and areas of expertise, as is represented among the exceptional faculty and students at Georgetown.”

Commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

As a scholar and administrator, Ceballo has demonstrated that diversity, equity and inclusion are central to her work.

While serving as associate dean, Ceballo led an initiative focused on helping first-generation and low-income students identify and utilize university resources. She also worked on a program to help hire, retain and support a more diverse faculty.

At Georgetown, Ceballo will build on College and university initiatives to advance racial justice.

“While we can all agree that diversity is part of our academic excellence and we know that excellence in research is not in tension with our commitments to diversity, we still have much to do to fully incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion into higher education,” Ceballo says.

“The issues facing our world are best tackled by people steeped in the principles of a liberal arts education rooted in Jesuit values: openness to dialogue across our differences, concern and action for the public good, commitment to social justice, promotion of research excellence across a breadth of fields, and care for the whole person, in mind, body, and spirit (cura personalis).”– Rosario Ceballo

Jesuit and Liberal Arts Tradition

Georgetown College is Georgetown University’s oldest school – founded in 1789 as the nation’s first Catholic institution of higher learning – and demonstrates the university’s long commitment to Jesuit traditions of an integrated education and productive research in the natural sciences, humanities, social sciences and fine arts.

Ceballo’s appointment follows the departure of Christopher Celenza, who joined Johns Hopkins University as the James B. Knapp Dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences in January. Soyica Colbert will continue to serve as interim dean until January 1, 2022.

As she assumes leadership of Georgetown College amid complex societal and global challenges, Ceballo is confident that a Jesuit, liberal arts education provides students the tools and perspective to take on the world’s most pressing problems.

“The issues facing our world are best tackled by people steeped in the principles of a liberal arts education rooted in Jesuit values: openness to dialogue across our differences, concern and action for the public good, commitment to social justice, promotion of research excellence across a breadth of fields, and care for the whole person, in mind, body, and spirit (cura personalis),” says Ceballo.

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