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New Interim Dept. Chair for Security Studies

May 04, 2016

Dr. William A. Taylor, an assistant professor of security studies at Angelo State University, has been named interim chair of ASU’s Department of Security Studies and Criminal Justice, effective May 15.

Dr. William Taylor Dr. William Taylor Taylor will replace Dr. Laurence F. “Casey” Jones, who is retiring May 14 after 26 years as an ASU faculty member and three years as chair of the Department of Security Studies and Criminal Justice. 

A former U.S. Marine, Taylor joined the ASU security studies faculty in 2011. Since then, he has been awarded 10 national grants and fellowships to fund his research and publications. His first book, “Every Citizen a Soldier: The Campaign for Universal Military Training after World War II,” was published in 2014 and won a Crader Family Book Prize Honorable Mention from the Crader Family Endowment for American Values. His second book, “Military Service and American Democracy: From World War II to the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars,” is scheduled to be published later this year through University Press of Kansas. 

Taylor has also contributed to 11 other books, has published over 55 reference articles and book reviews in more than 15 journals, and was a featured speaker for ASU’s Civil War Lecture Series and Great War Lecture Series. 

In addition to his academic credentials, Taylor served as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps for more than six years, holding posts in III Marine Expeditionary Force, Expeditionary Force Development Center and Marine Corps Combat Development Command. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and holds a doctorate in history from George Washington University. 

Dr. Casey Jones Dr. Casey Jones Jones joined the ASU faculty in 1990 as an assistant professor in what was then the Department of Government. He served as interim chair of the Department of Political Science and Philosophy from 2011-12 before becoming chair of the Department of Security Studies and Criminal Justice in 2013. He also helped start ASU’s Community Development Initiatives (CDI) in 2010 and co-authored a CDI column in the San Angelo Standard-Times that dealt with various public policy, health and community improvement topics. At CDI, he also conducted numerous community-based surveys and studies on behalf of local government and nonprofit organizations. 

An avid researcher and writer, Jones has published three books and dozens of journal articles, reviews and instructor resource guides. He is a former managing editor of the Texas Journal of Political Studies and former consultant for Texas Law Related Education. Prior to arriving at ASU, he taught at Los Angeles Community College, the University of Texas at San Antonio and Texas Southern University. He holds a doctorate in urban administration from the University of Texas at Arlington.