James Brockmole, Ph.D.

As Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, James Brockmole, Ph.D., serves as the chief executive and academic leader of the largest and most diverse college on the Baylor University campus. In this role, he stewards 25 academic schools and departments, 12 academic centers and institutes, 113 undergraduate and graduate programs, 267 staff, 516 faculty, 5,000+ courses, and more than 6,600 students in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Through its extensive educational and scholarly activities, the College of Arts & Sciences has a profound impact on campus, our nation, and the world, and plays a significant role in helping Baylor fulfill its mission "to educate men and women for worldwide leadership and service." 

Prior to his appointment at Baylor, Dean Brockmole spent 17 years on the faculty at the University of Notre Dame where he served as department chair, institute director, associate dean, and editor of various academic journals. In addition to his administrative leadership, he maintains a highly regarded research program. His work focuses on the mental mechanisms by which people attend to their visual surroundings, retain that information in memory, and use those memories to guide future behavior. He and his students have authored over 85 publications and his work has attracted $3 million in external research funding from the National Science Foundation, the Templeton Religion Trust, the European Research Council, the United Kingdom’s Economic and Social Research Council, and others.

Dean Brockmole received his bachelor’s degree in psychology and sociology from the University of Notre Dame and earned his master’s and doctoral degrees in experimental psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Michigan State University before holding his first faculty appointment at the University of Edinburgh. He is an elected fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, Psychonomic Society, and Phi Beta Kappa.

When not on campus, Dean Brockmole’s hobbies include woodworking and wildlife photography, especially birds. He and his wife, Jessica, have a goal of hiking all 63 national parks.