Ellen Gruenbaum said Wednesday she is resigning as dean of the College of Social Sciences at Fresno State to resume teaching and research in anthropology.

Gruenbaum said her decision was not a result of February's hotly contested campus conference on radical environmentalists. That conference, organized through the political science department, invited people, some of them convicted of felonies, to discuss their tactics.

The gathering drew criticism on campus and off.

Gruenbaum approved the conference, which was offered as an examination of the radical movement, and said the outrage it triggered came as a surprise. She stood by the conference, saying it fell within a university's mission.

On Wednesday, Gruenbaum stressed her career rather than the conference controversy.

"I have been contemplating the timing of my return to a faculty role ... to focus more on the teaching and scholarship that I love," she wrote in a letter to faculty at California State University, Fresno.

In a brief telephone interview, she alluded to the environmental conference when she said: "It has been a stressful year. It reminded me how desirable it is to be a scholar and teacher."

She said she always thought of her administrative job as "an opportunity for service."

After six years as dean, Gruenbaum said, she was happy to return to the faculty: "I'm a good teacher and love teaching."

Gruenbaum wrote "The Female Circumcision Controversy: An Anthropological Perspective" (University of Pennsylvania Press) in 2001, and has lectured at Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania.

In accepting Gruenbaum's decision, Fresno State provost J. Michael Ortiz noted accomplishments achieved at the college "on her watch": establishment of the Kenneth L. Maddy Institute of Public Affairs, a proposed joint doctorate in criminal sciences, a "blended liberal studies" program, and revision of the college's constitution.

Ortiz and Gruenbaum said they have not worked out the timing of the transition to a new dean.

Gruenbaum plans to return to Sudan for more anthropological research for at least one semester.