Celia M. Klin
Dean of Harpur College
Harpur College of Arts and Sciences; Psychology
Background
Celia M. Klin was appointed the dean of Harpur College of Arts and Sciences in 2021.
The University’s oldest and largest school, Harpur is also its most academically diverse, spanning the arts, humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and mathematics. In addition to Harpur’s 11,000 students, all the University’s undergraduate students are educated in Harpur, which is comprised of 42 academic departments and interdisciplinary programs with 130 undergraduate majors, 65 minors and 60 graduate programs.
A cognitive psychologist specializing in psycholinguists, Klin joined the Harpur College faculty in 1994 and, in addition to her role as a teacher and a scholar, she has served through the years as an undergraduate director, department chair and senior associate dean before being appointed as acting dean in 2020.
During her time at Harpur, the College has experienced tremendous growth and innovation, with increases in faculty and student numbers, research funding, and interdisciplinary programs and institutes. Under her tenure, Harpur has established a number of new degree programs as well as created the School of the Arts, which brings together programs in art and design, art history, music, theater and cinema, with additional contributions from the creative writing program, the Ƶ Art Museum and the Anderson Center of the Performing Arts.
She has co-authored more than 30 journal articles exploring the cognitive processes involved in the comprehension of language, on subjects ranging from the subtle meaning conveyed through punctuation in text messages to the ways in which readers take the perspective of story characters. She is also an editorial board member of the journal Discourse Processes, a fellow of the Society for Text & Discourse, and the recipient of both the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Faculty Service.
Klin’s research has been covered by both national and international media, including Good Morning America, The Today Show, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, ABC News, NBC News, Salon, MTV, The Guardian, Newsweek and Times of Israel. She has also been interviewed by CNN, National Public Radio, the Wall Street Journal, the BBC, Reader’s Digest and more.
Representative Publications (+graduate student author, *undergraduate student author)
- *Cook, A.M., Klin, C.M. & Westerman, D.L. (2023) Surviving with story characters: What do we remember? Memory & Cognition, 51, 1303-1316. DOI:
- *Houghton, K.J., *Poirier, R., & Klin, C.M. (2022). Credible Narrators and Misinformed Readers. Memory & Cognition.
- *Houghton, K.J., & Klin, C.M. (2020). Do readers remember what story characters remember? Discourse Processes, 57, 1-16. DOI:
- *Upadhyay, S.S.N., *Houghton, K.J., & Klin, C.M. (2018). Is “few” always less than expected? The influence of story context on readers’ interpretation of natural language quantifiers. Discourse Processes. 56, 708-727, DOI:
- *Houghton, K.J., *Upadhyay, S.S.N., & Klin, C.M. (2018). Punctuation in text messages may convey abruptness. Period. Computers in Human Behavior, 80, 112‑121.DOI:
Education
- PhD, MS, University of Massachusetts
- BS, Cornell University
Research Interests
- Psycholinguistics
- Reading
- Comprehension and memory for text
Awards
- Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching
- Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Faculty Service