Muller named director of Honors College

Dalia A. Muller, associate professor of history, has been appointed director of the Honors College and associate dean of undergraduate education, effective Aug. 14.

Muller succeeds Andrew M. Stott, who left UB to accept a position as college dean of undergraduate education for the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences at the University of Southern California. Stott led the Honors College in his role as vice provost and dean of undergraduate education.

As head of the Honors College, Muller will be responsible for guiding the academic experiences of one of UB’s most dynamic and academically talented undergraduate populations. She will develop an innovative curriculum that will continue to raise the Honors College’s visibility and reputation nationally, and further the ongoing effort to make the Honors College a more diverse and inclusive academic community.

In her role as associate dean, Muller will focus on the areas of diversity and inclusion, experiential learning and achieving excellence in the overall undergraduate experience.

A UB faculty member since 2009, Muller is a scholar of transnational Latin American and Caribbean history with an emphasis on the movement of people and ideas in the “Gulf World” of Cuba, Mexico and the United States. Her book “Cuban Émigrés and Independence in the Nineteenth-Century Gulf World” was published recently by University of North Carolina Press as part of its prestigious “Envisioning Cuba” series.

Muller has been an active member of the UB and Buffalo communities.

From 2009 to 2016, she served as associate director of the Caribbean and Latin/o American Studies Program in the Department of Transnational Studies, responsible for restructuring the program and for recruiting and retaining master’s students.

She also has served on numerous university-wide committees, as well as those in the Department of History. With support from UB’s Civic Engagement and Public Policy Strategic Strength and in partnership with PUSH Buffalo, she co-led development of an arts, literacy and empowerment program for youth in the Grant Street Neighborhood Center on Buffalo’s West Side.

Muller holds a bachelor’s degree in history, with honors, from Yale University, and master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. Before joining the UB faculty, she was an assistant professor of history at Loyola Marymount University.