Melanie Shell-Weiss has been appointed dean of the Libraries and Art Museum by Provost Jennifer Drake. Having served as interim dean since June 2025, Shell-Weiss has overseen much of the Libraries and Art Museum’s future strategic planning process.
Shell-Weiss has been at Grand Valley since 2011, where she began as an assistant professor of Integrative Studies (then called Liberal Studies). She went on to direct the Kutsche Office of Local History before chairing the department of Integrative, Religious, and Intercultural Studies, then serving as Associate Dean of Brooks College of Interdisciplinary Studies from 2021-2025 before stepping into her current position.
Coming into the role with experience as a classroom instructor will give Shell-Weiss a more rounded perspective on the needs of the faculty, staff and students she serves, she said.
“Something that I've heard loud and clear from colleagues here is that they want to make sure that other folks on campus are aware of the expertise that sits here in the Libraries and Art Museum in the work that faculty and staff are doing,” said Shell-Weiss.
Disseminating that knowledge and highlighting the wide range of expertise within the Libraries and Art Museum is one of her goals for the coming year.
In addition, Shell-Weiss wants to create a “third space” for students. The concept comes from sociologist Ray Oldenburg, who argues that in addition to work and home, people need a third “gathering space” to spend time and build community.
Libraries and museums have been identified as two of the most important third spaces, explained Shell-Weiss. “We want to become Grand Valley's third space, where folks can come and feel safe and welcomed.”
Students are at the center of much of Shell-Weiss’s vision for the future. Student success is one of the core tenets of the Libraries and Art Museum, along with an emphasis on visual literacy, which is a key component to developing information literacy.
When President Emeritus Arend "Don" Lubbers opened what would become the Art Museum on campus in 1999, his vision was for it to become a signature of Grand Valley, said Shell-Weiss.
“One of the things we can promise every single student who comes here, regardless of what they’re learning, is that their lives will be transformed by being around art all the time,” she said. “This makes folks more comfortable in the world, more civically engaged, and makes our students more confident in all kinds of spaces transformed by art.”
Grand Valley currently has the second largest public art collection in the state of Michigan. Shell-Weiss hopes to more thoroughly integrate the Art Museum with classroom curriculums and find more ways for students to engage with the art all around them.
“All of this is part of the larger Academic Affairs transformation that the provost envisions, which is an exciting part of becoming Grand Valley's new chapter,” said Shell-Weiss. “We know higher ed is changing. We know the needs of students are changing. So, we’ve got to identify those changes and build forward.”
