Taggart Named UW Honors College Assistant Dean

Breezy Taggart has been named the University of Wyoming’s new Honors College assistant dean following the retirement of former Associate Dean Leigh Selting at the end of the fall semester. Taggart will begin her new role at UW Friday, Jan. 6.

The UW Honors College provides a diverse body of motivated students with an interdisciplinary academic experience that positions them for success. With an average of 200 students in the first-year class and more than 700 students overall, the Honors College challenges students to think ethically, creatively and collaboratively and to cultivate inquiry, reflection and personal growth. Honors students take interdisciplinary courses uniquely created and taught within the Honors College while earning an honors undergraduate minor.

Taggart first taught for the Honors College in spring 2019, and she became an assistant instructional professor in fall 2021.

She currently directs and teaches in the first-year Honors Colloquium course sequence, and she also teaches interdisciplinary courses focusing on the intersections of art and medicine, and art and the environment. Her courses include “Environmental and Sustainability Issues in Art,” “Picturing Mental Illness in Literature, Art and Film” and “Explorations in Medicine, Science and Art in Florence, Italy.”

“I strongly believe in the mission of the Honors College that emphasizes interdisciplinary education, experiential learning and community,” Taggart says. “I am thrilled to support Dean Peter Parolin in leading our college to achieve this mission with our incredible students.”

Taggart’s other duties for the Honors College have included web design, marketing and editing the biannual college magazine. Her duties as assistant dean will include oversight of the Honors Colloquium, SOAR curriculum and college website as well as assisting the dean with curriculum, budget, grants and scholarships, and college policies and procedures. Additionally, Taggart will collaborate with the Honors College director of student success on college recruitment, retention and assessment.

Her UW accolades include selection by the Wyoming Institute for Humanities Research to deliver the annual Sandeen Lecture in the Humanities last month.

“Honors is extraordinarily lucky to have a colleague as multitalented as Breezy Taggart come on board as our assistant dean,” Parolin says. “She believes in the power of an interdisciplinary education to prepare students for the world they will enter, and she is committed to helping students succeed. She is going to have a wonderful impact on the Honors College and on UW as a whole.”

Taggart, originally from Las Vegas, Nev., is a first-generation college graduate. She earned her bachelor’s (2011) and master’s (2013) degrees, both from Brigham Young University, in art history and curatorial studies; and a Ph.D. (2018) in design, environment and the arts from Arizona State University.

Her current faculty bio can be found here.