Specialized Medicine
In 2011, James E.K. Hildreth left Meharry Medical College, in Nashville — where he was a professor — to become dean of the College of Biological Sciences at the University of California at Davis.
But he always felt a deep connection to Meharry, one of the nation’s oldest historically black medical colleges. During the six years he worked there, he did research on HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and founded the institution’s Center for AIDS Health Disparities Research. The bond was strong enough to lure him back, this time to serve as its president and chief executive. On July 1, he will succeed A. Cherrie Epps, who was 83 when she was appointed to the post two years ago.
“My coming back is to be part of a place that as its core mission is trying to provide health care to the underserved,” says Dr. Hildreth.
A Harvard graduate, Dr. Hildreth earned a doctorate in immunology from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and a medical degree from the Johns Hopkins University, where his academic career began. Yet, Dr. Hildreth says, his father’s death from cancer when he was 11 — there was limited medical care for poor black people in their small Arkansas town — helped produce the kind of passion for medicine that makes him an especially good fit at Meharry.
“In some ways the health-disparities issue is what prompted me to become a physician in the first place,” he says.
Dr. Hildreth wants to take advantage of Meharry’s small size, which allows it to be “creative and innovative in thinking about new ways to deliver care,” he says. “I think all the ingredients are there for that to work.”
Being a familiar face at Meharry should make his job easier, Dr. Hildreth says, but he still plans to spend time early on reconnecting with some people and meeting others.
“I want the students to see me,” he says. “Many of the students who are drawn here, my story is sort of their story. I love being their cheerleader.”— Audrey Williams June
A Senior Year in the Wild
Gordon Dimmig
Dylan Miller
At Juniata College, in central Pennsylvania, students pay around $6,000 a year for a room on campus. This year, Dylan Miller, a senior majoring in literary and philosophical studies, paid just $400 for his new home.
That’s because Mr. Miller lives in a self-constructed shelter in the forest, about a 30-minute walk from the campus. The $400 went for a tarp and rope, but natural materials make up the rest. Inside is a desk and table made of wooden planks, a chest, a bed, a small rug, and a propane heater. He spends most of the day on the campus, where he can access the Internet to do his homework.
The purpose of Mr. Miller’s project is to better understand “simple living” — a lifestyle studied by philosophers like Henry David Thoreau — for his senior research project. “It’s really a study in challenging yourself to be comfortable in situations that don’t necessarily seem to be comfortable,” he says.
Mr. Miller moved into his woodland home on the first day of classes in August, and intends to stay there until he graduates this month, after which he’ll tear the whole thing down. Living out there for the full academic year, he says, lets him form a comfortable routine as he would while living in a dorm.
Mr. Miller says the experience has taught him to be content with life — whether he’s in the woods or in class. After college, he hopes to help others feel the same way by publishing photographs and a written account of his experience.
Unexpectedly, he says, the project improved his social life. Plenty of Juniata students have stopped by, eager for a peek inside the shelter.
“I’ve sort of become ‘that kid’ on campus,” he says. “Becoming a hermit gets you a lot of friends.” — Maddy Berner
Shark Biologist and Dean
Jeremy Vaudo
Michael Heithaus
While growing up among the cornfields of Ohio, Michael R. Heithaus became obsessed with dolphins. But that changed when, as a student at Oberlin College, he went on a marine-biology field trip to Australia. “I was struck by how little we knew about the behavior of coastal shark species,” he says. “And being a sucker for a challenge. ...”
In April, Mr. Heithaus became dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at Florida International University after nine months as interim dean of the division, which enrolls about 23,000 students. He joined the university in 2003, with no thought of entering academic administration, he says.
His skills in managing research teams, and his rise to prominence among shark biologists, led mentors to encourage him become founding director and then executive director of Florida International’s School of Environment, Arts and Society. He was involved in the university’s acquisition in 2013 of the Aquarius Reef Base, a one-of-a-kind submerged research platform 60 feet underwater in the Florida Keys.
Conducting research there is “like space exploration,” he says; scientists spend up to several weeks in the laboratory without surfacing. The base “plays an important role in capturing the imagination of the public,” he says, “especially to get kids excited to go into these kinds of careers.”
Mr. Heithaus says he has been able to maintain a reduced research program, and will as dean, by depending on camaraderie developed during field trips and on remote-tracking techniques that help “unravel the lives” of his research quarries.
The selection of Mr. Heithaus disappointed some faculty members who favored an external candidate and hoped the university would appoint the first woman and first member of a minority group to the post.
“I can’t change who I am,” Mr. Heithaus says. He looks to his understanding of ecosystem management to inform his administrative work, he says, and will be guided by the question: How we can fix the system so that it works for everybody? — Peter Monaghan
Revival via Facebook
Reed Hutchinson
Michael Chwe
Sixteen years ago, shortly after being denied tenure at the University of Chicago, Michael Chwe decided to write a book about how the game-theory concept of “common knowledge” applies to daily life. Mr. Chwe, now a tenured professor of political science at the University of California at Los Angeles, hadn’t thought about the book, Rational Ritual, much since — until March 31, when he learned that it would be the next pick for a book club started this year by Mark Zuckerberg, a co-founder of Facebook.
Mr. Chwe, who is also author of the 2013 trade book Jane Austen, Game Theorist, calls the selection “a complete surprise.” He isn’t sure how people at Facebook discovered his earlier work, though he speculates that it might appeal to people in social media because it discusses how ideas spread.
Eight days later, Mr. Chwe was at Facebook network’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., to respond to users’ questions about his book online.
Requests for the signed bookplates he offered on Facebook came from followers in Canada, India, and Latin America, among other places. He also had the opportunity to write more broadly about his book, for the Harvard Business Review and The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog.
“All you want as a scholar is for people to find your ideas useful,” says Mr. Chwe. “So it’s nice to hear back, 14 years later. You get the feeling that a lot of people are intellectually hungry, especially those not in urban areas, and you never know who might be interested.” — Angela Chen
Mills College Chief to Go
Alecia A. DeCoudreaux, who said last month that she would step down as president of Mills College in June 2016, was facing the possibility of a faculty no-confidence vote.
Ms. DeCoudreaux has led Mills, a liberal-arts college for women in Oakland, Calif., since 2011. She cited a desire to spend more time with her husband and her mother.
A letter to the college’s Board of Trustees from the Faculty Executive Committee, a draft of which was provided to The Chronicle, said a vote was imminent on a proposal calling for the president’s immediate resignation. The letter complained of “a lack of meaningful leadership” and said that Ms. DeCoudreaux failed to collaborate well with the faculty.
After learning the president would step down, the committee, rather than hold the vote, pushed for the board to review her leadership. Ms. DeCoudreaux said faculty opposition had not influenced her decision to resign, but it indicated “that all day, every day, I make the tough decisions the board expects of me.” — Jack Stripling
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