U.VA. ARTS AND SCIENCES DEAN RAYMOND NELSON 
	 TO STEP DOWN NEXT YEAR 

	CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., Aug. 27 -- Raymond J. Nelson, dean of
the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and admired as
one of the University of Virginia's most effective administrators,
announced Tuesday that he will step down a year from now to return
to full-time teaching and research.
	An American literature scholar who holds the William R.
Kenan Jr. Professorship in English, Nelson has served as Arts and
Sciences dean since 1989 and has combined administration with
teaching since 1985, when he began serving as associate dean. During
that time he has seen many of the school's departments grow in
national stature and admissions standards become increasingly
competitive as both the size and diversity of the student body
increased. His leadership is credited with helping keep Virginia
among a select few top universities strongly committed to both
excellent undergraduate education and world-class research.
	Nelson has drawn praise for guiding Arts and Sciences, the
liberal arts core of the University with more than 60 percent of its
students, during an era of deep financial austerity, diminishing
state support and threats to faculty morale.  A scholar with a
special interest in the lives of 20th century American writers, he
emerged as a tireless fundraiser for private support for Arts and
Sciences when the University launched its current Capital
Campaign. 	
	"He has carried out one of the most complex jobs in the
University with remarkably good judgment through very hard times,"
said vice president and provost Peter W. Low, noting that Nelson
oversees some 25 academic departments and more than half of the
University's non medical instructional faculty. "He is going to be
missed by many people."  A search committee for 
a successor will be appointed within a few weeks, Low said.	
	Nelson, 57, will step down at the end of next August after
eight years at the helm of Arts and Sciences.
	"It's time to get back to my books," he said. "I never
intended for the deanship to be a long-term position."
	Nelson said he is looking forward to devoting more time to a
longstanding writing project focusing on mid-20th century American
poets and the historical background of their lives and work.
	Throughout his period as dean Nelson has continued to teach
English and American literature, at both the undergraduate and
graduate levels. He is author of "Van Wyck Brooks: A Writer's Life"
and "Kenneth Patchen and American Mysticism," which won the Poetry
Society of America's prestigious Melville Cane Award as the best
critical book of 1984 on American poetry.  He has written numerous
scholarly articles on American writers, including Patchen, Herman
Melville, Chester Himes and Weldon Kees.
	Nelson said his two greatest satisfactions are that Arts and
Sciences's academic quality has, if anything, increased despite
budget cuts and that the school has established a major development
effort for the first time. 
	Nelson joined the U.Va. faculty in 1969 after receiving his
doctorate from Stanford University and served as associate chair of
the English department from 1981 to 1984.  He began leading Arts and
Sciences in 1989 as Dean of the Faculty, a position that was
consolidated to include deanships of the College and Graduate School
of Arts and Sciences in 1995.
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                                      August 27, 1996