Scott Walter, Dean

Scott Walter is Dean of Library and Information Access at San Diego State University. He received his Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration from Washington State University, and his M.L.S. from Indiana University at Bloomington. In addition, he holds an M.S. in History and Philosophy of Education from Indiana, as well as an M.A. in Education from American University, an M.A. in Russian Area Studies from Georgetown University, and B.S. degrees in Russian and Linguistics, also from Georgetown.

Dr. Walter joined SDSU in 2020 from Illinois Wesleyan University, where he served as University Librarian, University Copyright Officer, and Co-Interim Chief Technology Officer. Prior to IWU, he served as University Librarian at DePaul University, Associate University Librarian for Services and Associate Dean of Libraries at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Assistant Dean of Libraries for Information and Instructional Services at the University of Kansas. A teacher as well a librarian, Dr. Walter has served as an adjunct member of the faculty at Washington State University, the University of Kansas, Dominican University, San Jose State University, and at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he held the rank of Professor of Library Administration and Library and Information Science. His research interests are in the intersections between library leadership and higher education leadership, and he has published and presented widely on topics including information literacy instruction and assessment, collaboration among libraries and student affairs professionals, library assessment, strategic planning in academic libraries, and the future of academic library staffing and services.

Dr. Walter has held leadership roles in a number of professional associations and consortia, including, most recently, as Americas Regional Council Representative to the OCLC Global Council. Previously, he served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Catholic Research Resources Alliance, Library Publishing Coalition, Chicago Collections, and the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI). From 2013-16, he served as Editor-in-Chief of College & Research Libraries, the scholarly journal of the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL), and has served in other leadership roles, including as Chair of the American Educational Research Association's Communication of Research Special Interest Group, Chair of the ACRL Education and Behavioral Sciences Section, and Councilor-at-Large of the American Library Association.

Dr. Walter has been selected as an Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Leadership Fellow, a Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) Academic Leadership Program Fellow, and as a member of the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies Senior Fellows Program. In 2012, he was named "Distinguished Education and Behavioral Sciences Librarian" by the ACRL Education and Behavioral Sciences Section.