When he starts the job as dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Kansas University, Carl Lejuez will be living west of Atlanta for the first time in his life.

And he’ll have to explain to an entirely new region of people how to pronounce his last name. Then again, he still does that in Maryland, where he’s been almost 15 years, and jokes that he’ll answer to most anything close.

Lejuez (pronounced lay-SHWAY) — professor of psychology and associate dean of research for the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences at the University of Maryland — was announced Wednesday as the next dean of KU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, or CLAS.

Carl Lejuez

It’s a big job facing some particular challenges, including declining funding, proving degrees’ relevance in the job market and attracting diverse students and faculty.

CLAS is KU’s largest academic unit, employing more than 600 faculty, enrolling more than 13,500 undergraduate and graduate students, and offering more than 100 majors in 53 academic departments.

KU Provost Jeff Vitter said, in a news release, that Lejuez’s “skill and insight” would identify new opportunities for CLAS and lead it to even greater prominence.

Lejuez is scheduled to begin in February, taking the reins from interim CLAS dean Don Steeples. Past CLAS dean Danny Anderson left KU in March to become president of Trinity University in San Antonio.

Lejuez was one of four dean finalists who visited campus earlier this semester, giving presentations on the topic “21st Century Challenges to Liberal Arts and Sciences (and how KU will address them).”

In his Sept. 2 talk, Lejuez stressed the need for creativity to improve diversity in CLAS, “face time” to avoid disconnect between administrators and faculty, and collaboration to avoid a “silo mentality” between different disciplines.

Lejuez said Wednesday that his first priorities at KU would include building enthusiasm for the College’s mission and connections between faculty across departments.

“Hopefully that’s something that can build new directions and new ideas, and really build the research mission of the College,” he said. He added, “One of the things that’s so exciting about this position is to really have an opportunity to work at all ends of the liberal arts and sciences mission.”

Lejuez said fundraising would be a top priority, and he looks forward to getting to know the things that make KU special and sharing those with key players.

He said that also would be important for managing the faculty of CLAS.

“You can’t lead unless you really understand who you’re leading,” he said.

Lejuez has been at Maryland since 2001, after a one-year appointment as assistant research professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Brown University, according to bio information from KU. He has been associate dean at Maryland since 2013, where he oversees more than 200 faculty members and an overall budget of roughly $100 million in the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences.

KU highlighted Lejuez’s fundraising success: At Maryland, Lejuez developed a strategic plan for faculty research, and this past year, the university was ranked third nationally in total federal funding for social sciences research. He also has actively and successfully encouraged undergraduate and graduate student research, KU said.

Lejuez also founded and directs Maryland’s Center for Addictions, Personality and Emotion Research and serves as administrative director at the Maryland Neuroimaging Center.

Lejuez, 43, got his bachelor’s degree in psychology from Emory University and his master’s and doctoral degrees in clinical psychology from West Virginia University.

He grew up in Secaucus, N.J., just a few miles from New York City, and said he was the first in his family to go to college. His father grew up in Aruba, his mother in an Italian-American community in New Jersey.

As for the name Lejuez, family stories differ, but he believes it actually started as El Juez (“the judge” in Spanish) and at some point through the years was changed to a more French-sounding version.

Lejuez said he’ll be moving to Lawrence with his wife of just over a year, Sara Lejuez, who works in TV news at Voice of America.

They’re both excited about living in a true college town environment for the first time, particularly at KU, he said. “There is a lot of tradition and history.”