Stan Sclaroff ’80 Appointed Dean at Boston University

Photo by Cydney Scott for Boston University Photography

Stan Sclaroff ‘80 was appointed Dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences (CAS) at Boston University in May 2019. “In light of his performance and established reputation, his talent for organization-building and track record of collaborative leadership, and his strong commitment to improving diversity and the climate of inclusion within the College, we believe Professor Sclaroff is the right person to lead CAS to even greater levels of excellence,” said Jean Morrison, University provost, in an announcement of Stan’s appointment.

Stan joined the Arts & Sciences faculty in 1995 and has served in a number of roles: Chair of the Department of Computer Science, Associate Dean of the Faculty for Mathematical & Computational Sciences, and, prior to his appointment, as Interim Dean of CAS. An internationally respected scholar, he founded the Computer Science Department’s Image and Video Computing Group, a research initiative into machine learning, human-computer interaction, and computer vision (which seeks to automate functions performed by the human visual system). He has authored almost 50 journal articles and is the co-author of the book Visual Saliency: From Pixel-Level to Object-Level Analysis.

Stan received his B.S. from Tufts University with majors in Computer Science and English, and he received his S.M. and Ph.D. from the MIT Media Lab.

When asked what he still carries with him from his MFS experience, Stan cites the importance in the MFS community of human equality and inclusiveness, freedom of conscience, and social justice. “Being a closeted but obviously gay kid, in the late 1970’s, I was accepted for who I was and welcomed at MFS,” he said. He credits MFS for instilling in him a love for the humanities and the arts, specifically mentioning “art class with Chris Lilly Backus, learning Latin and math with Polly Caughey, and learning how to use slide rules, scientific calculators, and programming in Fortran for the first time in John Caughey’s physics class.” Stan also fondly recalled “a weekend spent with a few MFS classmates working with David Richie to help local families in the Mantua community of South Philadelphia.”

Stan currently lives in Boston and enjoys growing vegetables in a local community garden.