Frances M. Zauhar, Ph.D. was named Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Marywood University in July. Before coming to Marywood, she was the Humanities Division Chair at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown and a tenured faculty member in the English Department. Before her work at Pitt-Johnstown, she was a tenured Associate Professor of English at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, PA, where she was Chair of the English Department from 1994-2004 and the founding coordinator of the new program in Creative and Professional Writing from 2004-2006. She began her teaching career as an Assistant Professor of English at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, MN, where she taught from 1986-1991.

Dr. Zauhar has been a committed classroom instructor and teaching scholar throughout her academic career. She has developed and taught courses on a number of topics in American literature, including American Women Writers, American Indian Literatures, Immigrant Authors, and Environmental Literature. She has collaborated with colleagues and team taught courses on Literature and Politics Literature and the Visual Arts, and Media and Contemporary Culture—the academic title for a course she and a colleague taught on Star Trek.

In collaboration with her students, she has made conference presentations on literary relationships in early and modern literature, and she has mentored students pursuing their individual research on a variety of topics. Her research interests lie primarily in the area of 19th- and 20th-century American fiction.