Rubin Patterson

Rubin Patterson, Ph.D., is the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Howard University in Washington, DC where he prioritizes support for students to receive and for faculty to deliver a world-class liberal arts education rooted in the global African diasporic experience. Dean Patterson supports faculty in ongoing curricular innovation as well as supporting faculty research productivity, including in fields such as Data Science, AI, digital and environmental humanities, competition between democratic and authoritarian governing systems, etc. Dean Patterson also played a leadership role in the establishment of Howard’s Department of Earth, Environment, and Equity, and he has served on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Advisory Committee for the Office of Children’s Health Protection. Experiential learning, prominently including study abroad, has been one of his strategic priorities so that substantially more students in the College of Arts and Sciences will pursue such life-transforming and career-enhancing experiences. International partnerships between the College of Arts and Sciences and foreign universities have grown in number and in substance under his leadership.

Patterson served as an advisory board member during the production of the July 2026 publication of the new Sage Encyclopedia of Environmental Justice that includes hundreds of entries on all aspects of environmental justice by leading intellectuals throughout the world on environmental justice and science. Dean Patterson is also now pursuing research concerning the political economy of fossil fuels and energy transition in the United States and in South Africa.

Dean Patterson earned a Ph.D. in Sociology at Howard University, and he received a Bachelor of Science in Interdisciplinary Physics and Electrical Engineering from Florida State University and a Master of Science in Engineering Management from George Washington University. Before becoming an academic, he also had a brief career as a manufacturing engineer in the semiconductor and satellite communication industries.