Following a national search that yielded more than 75 candidates, Dr. John Brooks has been appointed dean of University College at Fayetteville State University (FSU).

In this role, Brooks will oversee programs for first-year students, academic support resources and interdisciplinary programs, such as honors and international education. He will play a coordinating role in FSU's efforts to improve retention and graduation rates.

A native of North Carolina, John Brooks earned a bachelor's degree in history and French from Duke University and a doctorate in history from the University of Chicago. He taught European and world history at Teikyo Loretto Heights University in Denver before returning to North Carolina as an assistant professor of history at Fayetteville State University in 1998.

He has published a book and several articles on the history of the social sciences in France, which led to an invitation to be a visiting scholar at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris in 2003. He became a tenured associate professor of history at FSU in 2004.

Although he has taught graduate courses, Brooks' teaching career has focused mainly on undergraduate courses, especially courses for first-year students. An advocate of educational technology, Brooks had students in his European survey courses build websites and give PowerPoint presentations to share the results of their research. Brooks has published and given presentations on his teaching innovations.

Brooks has a long association with University College.

He served as interim director in 2001-2002, during which time he helped create CHEER (Creating High Expectations for Educational Readiness), FSU's summer bridge program. He taught a section of freshman seminar for the Freshman Fellows program, a program that paired first-year students with faculty to conduct undergraduate research.

In 2004, Dr. Brooks became director of University College. During his tenure, he helped establish FSU's Learning Communities Initiative, which has grown from 50 to 600 first-year students in five years. He initiated a review of the University College core curriculum. He consolidated academic support resources into a University College Learning Center that provides academic support for writing, reading, mathematics, and other subjects. He expanded FSU's Student Success program for students in academic difficulty. He has developed innovative uses of technology to track student success and facilitate student-advisor communication.