Office of the Dean

Monica J. Casper, PhD, is the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Seattle University.

She received her BA in Sociology from the University of Chicago and her PhD in Sociology from the University of California, San Francisco.

Before arriving at Seattle University in 2024, Dr. Casper served as Special Assistant to the President on Gender-Based Violence and Professor of Sociology at San Diego State University. While there, she chaired a national Blue Ribbon Task Force on Gender-Based Violence to improve campus climate and safety. Prior to her appointment as Special Assistant, Dr. Casper served as Dean of the College of Arts and Letters.

Dr. Casper has held leadership roles at the University of Arizona and Arizona State University, where she directed Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies, as well as Vanderbilt University, where she directed the Women’s and Gender Studies program. In addition, Dr. Casper has been a Fellow in Biomedical Ethics at Stanford University and a faculty member at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Dr. Casper has written and lectured extensively on gender, health, trauma and violence, among other subjects. She has authored or coauthored eight books, including Babylost: Racism, Survival, and the Quiet Politics of Infant Mortality, from A to Z, which was published in 2022, and the forthcoming Who Belongs? Institutional Betrayal in Higher Education.