Chris Culbertson, dean of Kansas State’s College of Arts and Sciences, will leave K-State to become dean of the McCausland College of Arts and Sciences at the University of South Carolina, effective July 1, according to K-State Today.
Culbertson began at K-State in 2002 and was named dean in 2023. He has not announced any cause for departing the university at this time.
Samuel Mwangi, professor in the A.Q. Miller School of Media & Communications, said lateral job changes are unusual for administrators.
“Lateral move is horizontal move,” Mwangi said. “You go from the same position to the same position in a different institution. That’s not very common in the world of academia, because once you become an administrator you move up from dean to provost and then provost to president.”
Mwangi met Culbertson during Culbertson’s review for his promotion to full professor, and the two have been close friends since, Mwangi said.
“I found Chris [Culbertson] to be very open in terms of admitting what he doesn’t know, so I spent time with him talking about media and my specialties, and why these count in journalism; why I do what I do. … I got to know him very well. He’s very kind, he’s very open minded, he’s very helpful.”
Mwangi said he’s not sure why Culbertson took the lateral move, but he doesn’t suspect it’s due to administrative issues at K-State.
“In the last [faculty] meeting he told us he had closed the budget gap; not completely, but he was working to reduce it,” he said. “So there has been no sudden change to the budget to cause him to move. I think it may have been more family related, but that is me speculating because I haven’t talked to him [about it].”
Culbertson’s office declined to comment on the subject.
“We don’t have a statement or information about Dean Culbertson’s decision,” communications and marketing director for the College of Arts and Sciences, Marcia Locke, said via email.
Mwangi said A.Q. Miller School faculty are grateful for Culbertson’s contributions to the school.
“He was really kind to our school,” he said. “At the time when most people were not hiring, he gave us two new positions. We will miss that. He was very supportive of our school. I can say that I will miss him as a personal friend.”
K-State provost Jesse Perez Mendez will meet with College of Arts and Sciences staff on April 30 to discuss Culbertson’s departure and to “provide an update on our upcoming interim dean search along with our general plans for the permanent dean search,” he said in an email to staff from the college on Tuesday morning.
