Transitions: New Chief at Florida Coastal School of Law, Interim Provost Named at Michigan State U.

Chief executives

Appointments

Robin C. Capehart, interim president of Bluefield State College, has been named to the post permanently. He led West Liberty University from 2007 to 2015.

Darren Dawson, dean of engineering at Kansas State University, became president of the University of Alabama at Huntsville in June. He succeeded Robert Altenkirch, who retired.

Peter Goplerud, who was dean of Florida Coastal School of Law from 2004 to 2013, will serve as the school’s president.

Craig Pouncey, superintendent of Jefferson County Schools, in Birmingham, Ala., will become president of Coastal Alabama Community College on October 1. He will replace Kemba Chambers, the interim president.

Todd Steele, former president and chief executive of Tribeca Flashpoint College, has been named president of the nonprofit Zenith Education Group, which provides career and technical education through its Altierus Career Colleges.

Harrison Keller, deputy to the president for strategy and policy at the University of Texas at Austin, will become commissioner of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board on October 1.

Retirements

Dorothy Horrell, chancellor of the University of Colorado at Denver since 2015, plans to retire in June 2020.

John P. Tafaro, president of Chatfield College, plans to retire after more than 10 years at the helm.

Chief academic officers

Appointments

Edward Louis Hill Jr., former dean of the College of Education at Texas A&M University-Central Texas, has been named vice president for academic affairs and strategic initiatives at Wilberforce University.

Jerry T. Ice, interim academic dean at Three Rivers Community College, in Connecticut, has been named interim provost and vice president for academic affairs at Cambridge College.

Teresa A. Sullivan, former president of the University of Virginia, has been named interim provost at Michigan State University.

A. Scott Weber, vice president for student life at the University at Buffalo, has been named interim provost and vice president for academic affairs.

Other top administrators

Appointments

Tom Andriola, vice president and chief information officer for the University of California system office, will become vice chancellor for information technology and data at the University of California at Irvine on October 1.

Robert J. Clougherty Jr., provost at Glasgow Caledonian New York College, has been named vice president for technology, design, and innovation at Felician University.

Natalie R. Coles, chief development officer for Flying Horse Farms, a camp for children with serious illnesses and their families, has been named vice president for advancement and chief development officer at Wilberforce University.

Andrew A. Green, opinion editor of The Baltimore Sun, will become vice president for communications at the Johns Hopkins University on October 1.

MayKao Y. Hang, president and chief executive of the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation, will become vice president and founding dean of the College of Health at the University of St. Thomas this fall.

Amanda Kim, senior adviser to the president for equity, diversity, and inclusion and Title IX coordinator at St. Norbert College, has been named vice president for diversity and inclusion at DePauw University.

Kara Kolomitz, vice president for undergraduate student affairs and enrollment at Regis College, has been named senior vice president and chief operating officer.

Charles Leffler, who retired in 2015 as vice chancellor for finance and administration at North Carolina State University and who served in 2017-18 as interim vice chancellor for finance and administration for the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, will become interim vice chancellor for business affairs at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro on October 1.

Charles Maimone, vice chancellor for business affairs and chief financial officer at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, will become vice chancellor for finance and administration at North Carolina State University on September 30.

Milan Mrksich, a professor of biomedical engineering, chemistry, and cell and developmental biology at Northwestern University, has been named interim vice president for research.

Andrea Northam, senior director of communications, marketing and media relations at Winona State University, has been named interim vice president for university advancement.

Mary Osako, chief operating officer at Haven Tower Group, a communications and marketing firm, has been named vice chancellor for strategic communications at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Jay Walsh, vice president for research at Northwestern University, has been promoted to senior adviser to the president for research and science.

Melissa Woo, senior vice president for information technology and chief information officer at Stony Brook University, has been named senior vice president and chief information officer at Michigan State University.

Kishan Zuber, vice president for enrollment services at Wells College, has been named vice president for enrollment management and marketing at Wilkes University.

Resignations

Christi Hurt, interim vice chancellor for student affairs and former assistant vice chancellor and chief of staff at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has stepped down to become vice president for strategic initiatives at Cozen O’Connor, a law firm, and its affiliate professional-services firm, Margolis Healy.

Lynn Swann, athletic director at the University of Southern California, has stepped down.

Deans

Appointments

Nancy J. Brown, a professor and chair of the department of medicine at Vanderbilt University, will become dean of the School of Medicine at Yale University on February 1.

J. Cole Smith, associate provost for academic initiatives at Clemson University, has been named dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science at Syracuse University.

Jennifer Reiber, academic dean at Florida Coastal School of Law, has been named interim dean of the law school.

Resignations

Scott DeVito, dean and a professor of law at Florida Coastal School of Law, has stepped down after the American Bar Association denied the school’s application to convert from for-profit to nonprofit status. The school is continuing to pursue its application.

Other administrators

Appointments

Rebecca Ávila, chief operating officer at the Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands, has been named assistant dean of the School of Social Sciences at the University of California at Irvine.

Julie Joyce, curator of contemporary art at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, has been named senior curator in the exhibitions department at Art Center College of Design.

Susannah Pollvogt, director of academic excellence and bar skills in the School of Law at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, has been named associate dean of student success.

Andrea Schneider, a professor of law at Marquette University, has been named the first director of the Institute for Women’s Leadership.

David Seldin, a partner at the Brunswick Group, a global communications consultancy, has been named assistant vice chancellor for communications at the University of Pittsburgh main campus.

Andrea Specht, executive director and chief advancement officer at Artistry, a theater and visual-arts nonprofit organization, has been named interim foundation executive director and chief institutional advancement officer at Normandale Community College.

Jim Turcotte, vice president for enrollment services at Mississippi College, has been named executive director of alumni affairs in addition to his other role.

Nadia L. Ward, who was an associate professor of psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine and deputy director of the Yale Doctoral Internship Training Program in Clinical and Community Psychology, became director of the Mosakowski Institute for Public Enterprise at Clark University this summer.

Jodi White, director of alumni relations at Missouri Valley college, has been named director of alumni relations at Bethany College, in Kansas.

Maureen (Mo) White, assistant director of athletics for business operations at Connecticut College, will become director of athletics and chair of physical education on October 1.

Molree Williams-Lendor, executive director for equity and Title IX coordinator at Barnard College, will be the inaugural director of the Office for Workplace Culture and Inclusion at NYU Langone Health.

Resignations

David McBride, director of the University of Maryland’s Health Center, plans to step down for a job in the private sector, The Diamondback, a student-run news publication, reported. He and other center officials came under criticism last year for not notifying students of an adenovirus outbreak until one student had died. McBride has said the university’s actions were in line with guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Faculty

Appointments

Anna Sew Hoy, an artist who has held teaching positions at the University of Southern California and California State University at Long Beach, has been named an assistant professor of art in the School of the Arts and Architecture at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Thane Rosenbaum, a fellow at New York University School of Law and founder and creative director of the nonprofit organization Forum on Life, Culture, & Society, has been named a professor in the Touro College and University System. The forum, which was previously hosted by New York University School of Law, is now affiliated with Touro.

Jacqueline Stewart, a professor of cinema and media studies at the University of Chicago and a senior fellow at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, in Washington, D.C., has been named host of Silent Sunday Nights on Turner Classic Movies.

Awards

Nancy Cantor, chancellor of Rutgers University at Newark, has received the 10th Annual Ernest L. Boyer Award, for her significant contributions to American higher education, from the New American Colleges and Universities.

Gilles Renusson, a professor in the Secchia Institute for Culinary Education at Grand Rapids Community College, has been awarded an Order of Agricultural Merit from the French government.

Organizations

Appointments

Maximilian Muenke, senior investigator, head of the human-development section, and chief of the medical-genetics branch at the National Human Genome Research Institute of the National Institutes of Health, has been named chief executive of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics.

Deaths

Carl Baumgaertner, a clinical professor emeritus of engineering at Harvey Mudd College, died on August 16. He was 95. Before he came to the college, Baumgaertner worked in the aerospace division of Honeywell as chief engineer and director of engineering.

Clifton Ganus Jr., former president and chancellor emeritus of Harding University, died on September 9. He was 97. Ganus was a student at Harding and returned as a faculty member in 1946. He was president from 1965 until 1987, when he became the university’s first chancellor.

Anthony J. Santoro, president emeritus of Roger Williams University, died on September 9. He was 77. Santoro served as president from 1993 to 2000 and was the founding dean of the university’s law school from 1992 to 1993. He served as dean of the School of Law at Widener University from 1983 to 1992, as well as dean of the School of Law at what is now Quinnipiac University and a professor of law at Western New England College.

Jean Edward Smith, a professor of political science at Marshall University, died on September 1. He was 86. Smith wrote biographies of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ulysses S. Grant, and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Grant (Simon & Schuster, 2001) was a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize in biography. He also taught at the University of Toronto and Dartmouth College.

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