Dean Randy L. Diehl

Dean Randy L. Diehl

Randy Diehl has served more than 35 years as a psychology professor at The University of Texas at Austin, studying how humans perceive speech and teaching hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students. Since 2007, he has also demonstrated his passion for teaching and research as Dean of the College of Liberal Arts.

Under Dean Diehl's leadership, an increasing number of the college's programs and departments have gained national prominence. Among his many initiatives, he has:

• championed efforts to build a new College of Liberal Arts building on the east mall, where Liberal Arts students will have a space of their own to meet and study and where faculty will conduct cutting-edge research in a uniquely collaborative environment;
• led the university's landmark Task Force on Undergraduate Graduation Rates, which proposed more than 60 recommendations to help students graduate in a more timely fashion;
• led the establishment of the Humanities Research Awards, which provide $5,000 research grants to 10 scholars each year;
• helped attract world-class faculty and develop the Imaging Research Center, where cutting edge brain research is conducted at the heart of campus.

Dean Diehl earned his bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Illinois and his doctorate from the University of Minnesota. He joined The University of Texas faculty in 1975 and served as Psychology Department chair from 1995 to 1999, leading a period of expansion that included the construction of the state-of-the-art Sarah M. and Charles E. Seay Building.

Dean Diehl's scholarly research has focused on language, cognition and perception. He is a member of the university's Center for Perceptual Systems and headed the Diehl Lab, which is devoted to understanding how people perceive speech.

Over the past three decades, Dean Diehl has won multiple research grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and other organizations as well as several prestigious university teaching awards.

He was a visiting faculty member at Stockholm University in Sweden and the Instituto de Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores in Monterrey, Mexico, and has published more than 70 papers and articles.