The UCLA College of Letters and Science is the heart of UCLA and home to more than 85 percent of the university’s 28,000 undergraduate students. Together, its four academic divisions—Humanities, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences, and Social Sciences—encompass 34 departments, 109 undergraduate majors, more than 50 graduate degree programs and over 40 PhD programs that span research and teaching across both traditional and emerging disciplines in the liberal arts and sciences. A fifth division, Undergraduate Education, serves as the campus driver of excellence and innovation in the undergraduate experience. Taught by world-renowned faculty, the College’s undergraduate and graduate students move on to become business, government, community, and academic leaders of California and the world.

Dean of Humanities

Professor David Schaberg, chair of the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, was appointed dean of the Division of Humanities in July 2012. A member of the faculty since 1996, Schaberg has served as chair of the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures and as co-director of the Center for Chinese Studies. He assumes the post from Professor Tim Stowell, who served leadership roles in the Humanities for five years and returns to the faculty in the Department of Linguistics.

Schaberg has published articles on early Chinese literature, historiography and thought, and Greek/Chinese comparative issues. He is the author of "A Patterned Past: Form and Thought in Early Chinese Historiography," which was awarded the 2003 Levenson Prize for Books in Chinese Studies. He is also a contributor to a new translation of China’s first great historical work, "The Zuo Tradition," to be published by the University of Washington Press.

Dean of Life Sciences

Environmental biologist Victoria Sork became dean of life sciences on September 1, 2009. Victoria is a professor in the UCLA Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and in the university's Institute of the Environment. She is a pioneer in the field of landscape genetics, an area that integrates genomics, evolutionary biology and conservation.

Victoria came to UCLA in 2000 and served as a special assistant to the chancellor for academic initiatives after serving as an American Council for Education fellow-in-residence on campus. Her faculty appointments began in January 2002.

Prior to coming to UCLA, Victoria was a professor at the University of Missouri–St Louis, where she founded the International Center for Tropical Ecology. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and earned her bachelor's degree in science with honors from UC Irvine.

Senior Dean of the College
of Letters and Science
Dean of Physical Sciences

Joseph Rudnick is Senior Dean of the UCLA College of Letters and Science and dean of the Division of Physical Sciences. The former chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Joe has served on the UCLA faculty since 1984, when he joined the faculty in the Department of Physics in 1984 as a full professor. His research focuses on condensed-matter physics; his recent work has explored problems in biological physics.

Joe has been active in academic leadership, both within the College and in university-wide administration. From 1986-89, he was chair of his department. After serving as Chair once again from 2004 to 2006, he took the position of Acting Dean of Physical Sciences beginning in 2006. He began his term as Dean in 2009 and took on the additional responsibility of Senior Dean in 2012. He has also served on several university-wide committees, including the Committee on Academic Personnel from 1994-97; he was vice chair of the committee in 1996 and 1997.

Dean of Social Sciences

Alessandro "Sandro" Duranti is dean of the Division of Social Sciences, the largest academic division in the College.

Sandro has been a member of UCLA's anthropology faculty for more than two decades. He served for two years as the department's chair and for a decade as director of the UCLA Center for Language, Interaction, and Culture. His research interests include political discourse, language as a non-neutral medium and the role of improvisation in jazz, speechmaking and everyday interaction.

Sandro is a past recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, the UCLA Alumni Distinguished Teaching Award and the American Anthropological Association/Mayfield Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching of Anthropology. In 2008, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been president of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology, and the editor of two journals: Pragmatics and the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology.

Dean/Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education

Dr. Patricia A. Turner was appointed Dean and Vice Provost for UCLA’s Division of Undergraduate Education, effective Dec. 17, 2012. Professor Turner comes to UCLA from UC Davis where, in 1999, she was appointed vice provost for undergraduate education. From 2004 to 2006 she served as interim dean of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies, before returning to the position of vice provost for undergraduate education in the spring of 2007.

Patricia is a professor in World Arts and Cultures and African-American Studies; and her research focuses on racial dynamics as they surface in folklore and popular culture. Her fourth book, Crafted Lives: Stories and Studies of African-American Quilters, was published by University of Mississippi Press in 2009.

Patricia is chair of the UC Education Abroad Program Governing Committee and a member of UCDC Academic Advisory Council. She has served as executive director of the Reinvention Center, a national consortium of deans and vice provosts of undergraduate education at research universities. She holds a B.S. in political science from SUNY College at Oneonta and an M.A. and Ph.D. in rhetoric from the University of California, Berkeley.