Gregory M. Sadlek has served as the Founding Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS) at Cleveland State University (CSU) since 2005. Before arriving at Cleveland State, he received his Ph.D. at Northern Illinois University and taught at Hamilton College, the Université de Nantes, France, and the University of Nebraska at Omaha, where he served six years as department chairperson and was awarded the Jefferis Chair in 2003. A specialist in medieval English language and literature, he has published numerous articles in such journals as the Chaucer Review and Studies in Philology. His book, Idleness Working: The Discourse of Love’s Labor from Ovid through Chaucer and Gower, was published by Catholic University of America Press in 2004. He is a Fulbright Scholar, having served as subject specialist at Bahçeşehir University in Istanbul, Turkey, during 2011.
With about 150 full-time faculty members, 13 departments or schools, and multiple cultural or research centers, CLASS encompasses academic units in the humanities, social sciences, and fine arts.
In his role as dean, Dr. Sadlek has been particularly active in building strengths in strategic areas, cultivating his college’s community ties, and creating international partnerships in such countries as France, Poland, Slovenia, Turkey, Korea, and China. In his largest project to date, Dr. Sadlek worked with senior university leadership and community stakeholders to help create a CSU fine arts campus in Playhouse Square, the country’s second largest live theatre district. Partnering with the Cleveland Play House, the country’s oldest regional theatre, the CLASS Department of Theatre and Dance now performs in a renovated Allen Theatre and is a resident company of Playhouse Square. In addition, the CSU Department of Art moved to a remodeled Middough Building, which it shares with the Department of Theatre and Dance and the Cleveland Play House. Finally, the Galleries at CSU opened in August 2012 on a prominent corner close to the Allen Theatre in downtown Cleveland.