Lawrence Scaff, formerly head of the political science department at Pennsylvania State University, has been named dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Wayne State University, effective Sept. 1. The announcement was made by Tilden Edelstein, vice president for academic affairs at WSU.

Scaff, an expert in political and social theory as well as the philosophy and history of the social sciences, has been a professor and department head at Penn State since 1992. Prior to that, he was acting dean of the faculty of social and behavioral science at the University of Arizona, where he also was a professor. He began his teaching career at the University of California-Berkeley, and has taught as a visiting professor at universities in Germany and Italy.

The new WSU liberal arts dean earned doctoral, master's and bachelor's degrees from the University of California. He also studied at Oberlin College and at the University College of Addis-Ababa in Ethiopia. He has received numerous grants to conduct research in the United States and abroad in his specialty areas

Scaff served on numerous key administrative committees at Penn State and at the University of Arizona. He is a member of the American Political Science Association, the American Sociological Association and other professional organizations.