Meet Our Dean

Dean Brian Raines

Brian E. Raines of Fayetteville, Arkansas, is dean of the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Arkansas. Raines became dean in July 2024 after a 22-year academic, research, and leadership career at Baylor University.  

As dean of Fulbright College, Raines represents and provides strategic vision and leadership for the largest college at the University of Arkansas, which consists of more than 8,200 students, three schools, and 16 academic departments. The college provides the majority of the university’s core curriculum and offers degrees spanning the fine arts, humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences. 

Raines leads and manages more than 650 full-time faculty and instructors, 600-plus teaching and research assistants, as well as hundreds of staff members. He is responsible for overseeing and stewarding college budgets, including more than $110 million in instructional and research funds as well as endowments totaling more than $350 million.  

As dean, he is charged with upholding and embodying the college’s mission of “fostering peace through education.” Likewise, Raines ensures Fulbright College’s ongoing commitment to the University of Arkansas’ land-grant mission and its 150 Forward strategic plan, by creating and fostering a shared sense of vision, purpose, and priority. 

Prior to joining the U of A, Raines was a professor of mathematics at Baylor University, where he served in various leadership roles, most recently, as a Faculty Regent, and as the Associate Dean for Research in the university’s College of Arts & Sciences.  

Raines is an accomplished teacher, researcher, mathematician, and scholar, whose work focuses on the topology of pathological spaces in dynamical systems, and he has worked on problems that apply the topology of non-deterministic dynamical systems to mathematical economics. He has authored dozens of publications, many of which have appeared in top journals such as Advances in Mathematics, Transactions of the American Mathematical Society, the Journal of Mathematical Economics, Algebraic and Geometric Topology, and more.  

Raines has received external funding to support his research and teaching from foundations and agencies including the National Science Foundation (NSF) and has participated in numerous research presentations and lectures at universities around the world. He has served as a grant reviewer for the NSF and the American Mathematical Society, among others. Additionally, Raines has been recognized for his dedication to students and teaching excellence. 

Raines holds a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Oxford and a B.A. in English literature and a B.A. mathematics both from Hendrix College.