CANTON - Birdsong Associate Professor of Performance and Communication Arts Rebecca Daniels has been named associate dean of the first year at St. Lawrence University, beginning in the summer. In the position, she will lead and have administrative responsibility for all aspects of the University's First-Year Program.

A member of the St. Lawrence faculty since 1992, Daniels earned her bachelor's degree at Stanford, her MFA at the University of Portland and the Ph.D. at the University of Oregon. She taught nine full years in the First-Year Program, in addition to courses within her academic department, and continues to teach First-Year Seminar courses. Daniels was the faculty liaison for the project to renovate and expand facilities for the arts in the Griffiths-Noble University Center complex and has served on numerous committees, including Professional Standards, First-Year Program Faculty Development and Faculty Council.

Her research interests include women in theatre (especially directors), directing pedagogy, theatre and technology and creating plays and/or performance pieces from historical/real-life materials. Daniels has directed 10 mainstage theatre productions at St. Lawrence.

She succeeds Associate Professor of Psychology Catherine Crosby-Currie, who will return to teaching full-time, in the position.

St. Lawrence's residentially based, interdisciplinary First-Year Program, begun some 24 years ago, is the ideal environment for beginning the process of developing the complex intellectual and social skills that are at the heart of a liberal education and the habits of considered values and engaged citizenship that such an education should produce. St. Lawrence's First-Year Program is one of the oldest living/learning programs for first-year students in the country.