Transitions: First Female President at U. of Lynchburg, New Provost Named at Walden U.

Chief executives

Appointments

Damon A. Bell, former interim president of Ventura College, has been named interim president of Contra Costa College. Mojdeh Mehdizadeh has been serving as acting president since Katrina VanderWoude stepped down in August.

Pedro C. De Guzman, president and chief executive of Southern Technical College at Orlando, has been named president and chief executive of HCI College. He replaces Steve Hart and Larry Brown, who will become co-chairmen of the college.

Daniel C. Dobbins, president of a commercial air filtration manufacturer, Fiber Bond Corporation in Michigan City, Ind., will become president of McKendree University on January 1. He will succeed James M. Dennis, who plans to retire.

Damian J. Fernandez, chancellor of Pennsylvania State University at Abington, has been named president of Eckerd College. He will succeed Donald R. Eastman III, who plans to retire on June 30.

Dyrell Foster, vice president for student services at Moreno Valley College, will become president of Las Positas College in February. He will replace Roanna Bennie, who has served as interim president since Barry A. Russell retired.

Tracy Hartzler, vice president for finance and operations at Central New Mexico Community College, will become president of the college in 2020. She will succeed the college’s longest-serving president, Katharine Winograd, who plans to retire.

Christopher P. Ice, chief executive of Catholic Charities of Kansas City-St. Joseph, in Missouri, will become president of Ave Maria University on January 1. He will succeed Jim Towey, who plans to step down.

Alison Morrison-Shetlar, a professor of biology and a former provost and former interim chancellor at Western Carolina University, will become president of the University of Lynchburg in July 2020. She will succeed Kenneth R. Garren, who plans to retire. She will be the first woman and, as a native of Scotland, the first person born outside the United States to lead the university.

S. Georgia Nugent, interim president of Illinois Wesleyan University since August, has been named to the post permanently. Nugent, who is president emerita of Kenyon College, will be the first woman to lead the university.

Heath Thomas, dean of the Hobbs College of Theology and Ministry and associate vice president for church relations at Oklahoma Baptist University, will become president of the university in January.

Retirements

Stephen Greiner, president of West Liberty University since 2016, plans to retire in June.

R. Keith Hillkirk, chancellor of Pennsylvania State University-Berks since 2011, plans to retire in August.

Claire E. Sterk, president of Emory University since 2016, plans to retire in August 2020. She will return to the faculty of the university’s Rollins School of Public Health.

Chief academic officers

Appointments

Brad Baine, vice president for academic affairs and campus life at Williams Baptist University, has been named vice president for academic affairs at Black River Technical College.

Rachel Croson, dean of the College of Social Science at Michigan State University, has been named executive vice president and provost at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.

Grant Hayes, dean of the College of Education at East Carolina University, has been named acting provost and senior vice chancellor of academic affairs. He replaces Ron Mitchelson, who is now interim chancellor.

John Liu, vice president for research at Syracuse University, has been named the university’s interim vice chancellor for academic affairs and provost.

Sue Subocz, vice provost for curriculum, product strategy, innovation, and design at Walden University, has been named chief academic officer and provost.

Retirements

Kevin Whitaker, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, plans to retire next year.

Other top administrators

Appointments

Robert Cornell, vice president and actuary at Talcott Resolution Life and Hartford Life Insurance Company, has been named vice president for finance and chief financial officer at Eastern Nazarene College.

Shantay Grays, interim vice chancellor for student services at Houston Community College, has been named to the post permanently.

Marilyn Harris, director of human resources at Drury University, has been named chief human-resources and diversity and inclusion officer. She is the university’s first chief diversity and inclusion officer.

Terri Holston Lee, executive director of planning, research, effectiveness, and strategy at Johnston Community College, has been named vice president for institutional effectiveness and strategic initiatives.

Charlotte Fant Pegues, assistant provost at the University of Mississippi, has been named interim vice chancellor for student affairs.

José Miguel Román, assistant vice president for sponsored programs administration at New York University, will become vice president for research administration in the Office of Research and Economic Development at Rutgers University on January 6.

Resignations

Michele G. Wheatly, vice chancellor for academic affairs and provost at Syracuse University, will step down from that role to become special adviser to the chancellor for women’s leadership development initiatives on campus in January.

Retirements

Sherwood Wilson, vice president for operations at Virginia Tech, plans to retire in 2020.

Deans

Appointments

Susan Anderson, director of the frontier and rural-medicine program and chair of the department of family-medicine in the Sanford School of Medicine at the University of South Dakota, has been named the college’s first dean of rural medicine.

Troy Blanchard, interim dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and a professor of sociology at Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge, has been named dean of the college.

Alyncia Bowen, chair of the doctorate of health-care administration at Franklin University, was appointed dean of doctoral studies and the School of Nursing.

Kristen Broady, a former lecturer in economics at Howard University and a former dean of the division of business and computer science at Atlanta Metropolitan State College, has been named dean of the College of Business at Dillard University.

Stacy Jaffee Gropack, dean of the School of Health Professions at Long Island University at Brooklyn, has been named dean of the School of Health Technology and Management at Stony Brook University.

Teresa Petty, associate dean of the Cato College of Education at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, has been named interim dean of the college.

Resignations

Dan J. Martin, dean of the College of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University, plans to step down and return to the faculty in the School of Drama.

Other administrators

Appointments

David Bishop, president of Solaris Consulting Inc., has been named director of public relations at Southern Utah University.

David Chun, assistant dean of technology at the University of Miami, has been named chief information officer at Hamline University.

Chelsea Howells, art director at Pattern, a management and ecommerce consulting firm, has been named director of creative services at Southern Utah University.

Rhonda Kitch, registrar at North Dakota State University, will become university registrar at Cornell University on January 13.

Whitney Metz, senior director of development for student affairs at the University of South Carolina at Columbia, has been named assistant vice president for institutional advancement at Newberry College.

Patricia Myers, director of college-wide student affairs at State University of New York Empire State College, has been named associate dean of external academic affairs at Hudson Valley Community College.

Marcy Pendergast, executive director of the Academic Success Center at College of Saint Rose, has been named director of the Learning Centers at Hudson Valley Community College.

Monique Pikus, associate director and lecturer in the liberal-arts honors program at the University of Texas at Austin, has been named the first director of diversity and organizational climate in the College of Liberal Arts.

Ronalyn Wilson, associate dean of academic affairs and chief diversity officer at Fulton-Montgomery Community College, has been named assistant vice president for academic affairs at Hudson Valley Community College.

Adia Harvey Wingfield, a professor of sociology in the College of Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has been named associate dean for faculty development.

Awards

American Mathematical Society

The American Mathematical Society gave the following awards: the Bôcher Prize, for a notable paper in analysis; the Chevalley Prize, for notable work in Lie Theory; the Joseph L. Doob Prize, for a research book that promises to have a deep and long-term impact in its area; the Levi L. Conant Prize, for the best expository paper published in either the Notices of the AMS or the Bulletin of the AMS in the preceding five years; and the Ostrowski Prize, for achievements in the field of pure mathematics and in the foundations of numerical mathematics.

Camillo De Lellis, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, Lawrence Guth, a professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Laure Saint-Raymond, a professor at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, have been named recipients the 2020 Bôcher Memorial Prize.

Huanchen Bao, an assistant professor of mathematics at the National University of Singapore, and Weiqiang Wang, a professor of mathematics at the University of Virginia, have been named recipients of the 2020 Chevalley Prize.

René Carmona, a professor of operations research and financial engineering at Princeton University, and François Delarue, a professor at the research laboratory of mathematics at the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, have been named recipients of the 2020 Joseph L. Doob Prize for their book Probabilistic Theory of Mean Field Games with Applications, I and II (Springer, 2018).

Amie Wilkinson, a professor of mathematics at the University of Chicago, has been named the recipient of the 2020 Levi L. Conant Prize.

Assaf Naor, a professor of mathematics at Princeton University, received the 2019 Ostrowski Prize in Higher Mathematics.

Women in Cognitive Science

Women in Cognitive Science gave the 2019 Psychonomic Society and Women in Cognitive Science Leadership Awards in recognition of individuals who work to benefit women in the field.

Sian L. Beilock, a professor of psychology and president of Barnard College, received the 2019 Women in Cognitive Science Enduring Leadership Award.

Celeste Kidd, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley, and Barbara Spellman, a professor of law and psychology at the University of Virginia School of Law, received the 2019 Women in Cognitive Science Leadership Award.

Organizations

Appointments

Sandra Jordan, chancellor of the University of South Carolina at Aiken, has been elected chair of the NCAA Division II Presidents Council.

Steven Knapp, president emeritus and a university professor of English at George Washington University, has been named president of the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.

Deaths

Clifford C. Baker, former president of Alabama State University, died on November 3. He was 89. Baker served as president from 1991 to 1994. He also served as assistant state superintendent of education for the State of Alabama from 1976 to 1989.

John M. Matsen III, a professor emeritus of pathology and pediatrics at the University of Utah, died on November 9. He was 86. Matsen, who arrived at the university in 1974, also served as dean of the School of Medicine and senior vice president for health sciences. Prior to Utah, he directed the Hospital Clinical Microbiology Laboratories at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. He became the first president of Associated Regional and University Pathologists Laboratories in 1984.

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