Dr. Delia M. Garcia has been appointed Assistant Dean of the UCF College of Arts and Humanities, effective August 8. Garcia joined UCF in 1998 and served in various roles within the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Arts and Humanities. Garcia served one year as interim assistant dean in CAH and will continue with her current areas of responsibility: curriculum, scheduling, and student success.
Prior to being appointed interim assistant dean, Garcia served as the director of CAHSA, the College of Arts and Humanities’ Student Advising office. While in that role, Garcia led the creation of the College Council and was later the inaugural chair of the Advising Leadership Council (ALC), both university-wide councils designed to advocate for policies and processes to better serve students’ needs and improve student success outcomes. Garcia was awarded NACADA’s Advising Administrator award at UCF in 2018 and led or co-led multiple, university-wide teams that designed and implemented new technologies and student success efforts.
Jeff Moore, dean of the College of Arts and Humanities, says that Garcia’s passion for each students’ success combined with her data informed approach to improving outcomes will yield positive results for students and the college. “Delia has detailed knowledge of our program requirements and university performance metrics and I expect her knowledge and approach to help us align school and department efforts with college and university goals.”
Over the last year while in her interim role, Garcia leveraged the expertise of college staff members Trisha Farmer, Kendra Gilbertson and Ashli Van Horn to lay the foundation for a new approach to making data informed decisions related to scheduling, curriculum and student success outcomes. The new approach seeks to strike a balance between valuing the unique needs and talents of each student and helping CAH achieve student success outcomes.
Garcia says, “I’m committed to understanding all aspects of the college and the broader university landscape to support chairs and directors as they create conditions to help faculty and students succeed. The arts and humanities bring a great deal of value to individuals’ quality of life and to society. The strength of the backlash against these disciplines only confirms their value so we’ll accelerate our efforts to attract students to study in the arts and humanities and redouble our efforts to prepare them for leadership roles.”
Garcia earned her PhD in Texts and Technology at UCF in 2019.