Dr. Regina Lawrence has been appointed as the new Edwin L. Artzt Dean of the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon. Dr. Lawrence has been serving as interim dean since August 2025, and most recently held the roles of Associate Dean of SOJC Portland and Director of the Agora Journalism Center. Since joining the SOJC in 2015, she has been a member of the SOJC executive leadership team, served as co-chair of the SOJC Graduate Affairs Committee, and has been an active leader on the UO Portland campus, including chairing the campus-wide Academic Collaborative. Dr. Lawrence is a nationally recognized expert on political communication, gender and politics, local news ecosystems, community-centered journalism, and the role of media in democracy. She currently serves as Editor in Chief of the journal Political Communication and as Co-editor of the Communication, Society & Politics book series at Cambridge University Press. Her scholarship includes numerous books, peer-reviewed studies, and public-facing reports. In 2024, Dr. Lawrence received the Public Engagement Award from the Journalism Studies Division of the International Communication Association, which recognizes a scholar who has successfully engaged with publics and organizations outside of academia in ways that meaningfully impact both scholarship and journalistic practice. In 2025, she received the Murray Edelman Lifetime Distinguished Career Award from the American Political Science Association, recognizing a lifetime contribution to the study of political communication. Dr. Lawrence received her Bachelor of Arts in History and Political Science from Metropolitan State College in Denver, her Master of Arts in Political Science from the University of Colorado at Denver, and her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Washington. Read more.