Appointment of Dean, Graduate School–Newark

April 23, 2012

Members of the Rutgers Community:

Interim Chancellor Philip Yeagle and I are pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Maggie Shiffrar as Dean of the Graduate School–Newark, effective July 1, 2012.

A member of the Rutgers–Newark faculty since 1991, Dr. Shiffrar is a professor of psychology and former chair and graduate director of the Department of Psychology. She served as the co-RUFAIR Professor on the Newark campus in support of women in science at Rutgers. She received the Rutgers University Board of Trustees Award for Excellence in Research in 2008, and in 2010 she was named the FASN David Hosford Scholar. Dr. Shiffrar has also been a driving force on behalf of Rutgers–Newark’s LGBTQ community.

Dr. Shiffrar’s research concerns the visual perception of the human body, a topic that involves integrated studies of the visual system, the motor system, and social psychological processes. She is currently studying how systematic decrements in visual sensitivity to other people’s actions can give rise to social difficulties experienced by people on the autism spectrum. 

Maggie Shiffrar earned her B.A. in psychobiology from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1985 and her Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford University in 1990. Before coming to Rutgers, she conducted post-doctoral research at the Université de Paris V and the NASA Ames Research Center. Author of more than 60 articles and book chapters, as well as two edited volumes in her field, Dr. Shiffrar is an elected Fellow of both the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science. She has garnered such international honors as the Landsdowne Scholar Award (Canada), a Max Planck Scholarship (Germany), and a Chateaubriand Fellowship (France). 

Dr. Shiffrar will bring to the deanship academic and administrative excellence. Please join us in welcoming Maggie to her new position and to the leadership team at Rutgers.

Richard L. McCormick
President
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey