David A. Young is a retired professor of plant biology in the School of Life Sciences and former senior vice president and director of ASU's Havasu campus. Prior positions at ASU include service as the Senior VP for Academic Affairs and Vice President and as the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Previous administrative appointments include: Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, Provost at Colorado State University, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma and director of the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden.
Professor Young also has been a tenured faculty member in botany at Cornell University, where he directed the L.H. Bailey Hortorium and served as associate dean of the Graduate School. He has held other faculty appointments at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Union College in Schenectady, N.Y. He holds a Ph.D. in botany from the Claremont Graduate University, Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden and master’s and bachelor’s degrees in biology from California State University, Fullerton. He is the author of two books, four book chapters and more than 50 published papers, technical reports and abstracts. He is a native of Pomona, Calif.