Dr. Steven Windmueller was appointed Dean of the Los Angeles campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in August of 2006 by Rabbi David Ellenson, President of the College-Institute. In March of 2009, Dr. Ellenson named Dean Windmueller to the Gottschalk Chair in Jewish Communal Studies.

Steven Windmueller has held a number of prominent positions within the Jewish community over the course of a thirty year professional career. Between 1995-2006, he served as Director of the College’s School of Jewish Communal Service. Prior to coming to HUC, he served for ten years as the Executive Director of the Community Relations Committee of the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles. Dr. Windmueller had previously served for twelve years as a federation director in upstate New York. He began his professional career on the staff of the American Jewish Committee.

A specialist on political issues and American Jewish affairs, Dr. Windmueller holds a doctorate in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania and has held academic appointments at several major institutions of higher learning. He has appeared on CNN, PBS, NBC, and other nationally syndicated media offering commentaries on Jewish public affairs matters. Over the years his more than thirty articles and monographs have appeared in such publications as the Los Angeles Times, Sh’ma and Moment Magazines, the Jerusalem Letter, and the Journal of Jewish Communal Service. During his professional service, Dr. Windmueller has consulted with government officials and political candidates and has had occasion to represent the Jewish community on various international missions. He has been contributed a number of articles to recent books on Jewish public policy and leadership issues. His Pew-funded research on the major national Jewish community relations agencies appeared in a recent publication, Jewish Polity and American Civil Society: Communal Agencies and Religious Movements in the American Public Square (Roman and Littlefield, 2002).