Transitions: New President Selected at Hilbert College, Mount Wachusett Names Academic-Affairs Chief

Chief executives

Appointments

Michael S. Brophy, former president of Benedictine University, will become president of Hilbert College on January 15. He will replace Rev. Michael Sajda, who has served as interim president since Cynthia Zane’s retirement last year.

Lucille H. Maugé, executive vice president and chief financial officer at Clark Atlanta University, will become acting president on December 8 after Ronald A. Johnson resigns.

Paul Percy, executive vice president and provost at Carson-Newman University, will become interim president on January 1. He will replace J. Randall O’Brien, who plans to retire.

Janet N. Spriggs, chief operating officer at Rowan-Cabarrus Community College, has been named president of Forsyth Technical Community College. She will succeed Gary M. Green, who plans to retire in February.

Melinda Treadwell, interim president of Keene State College since July 2017, has been named to the position permanently.

Resignations

José Antonio Bowen, president of Goucher College since 2014, plans to step down at the end of the academic year.

Ronald A. Johnson, president of Clark Atlanta University since 2015, plans to resign on December 7.

Wallace D. Loh, president of the University of Maryland at College Park since 2010, plans to step down in June. This follows an investigation into the university’s football program after the death of Jordan McNair, a 19-year-old football player.

John MacArthur, president of Master’s University and Seminary since 1983, plans to step down as president of the university in May 2020. He will keep his role as president of the seminary and will assume the role of university chancellor.

Margaret Spellings, president of the University of North Carolina system since 2016, plans to resign on March 1.

Beverly Warren, president of Kent State University since 2014, plans to step down at the end of this academic year.

Chief academic officers

Appointments

Elizabeth Bejar, vice president for academic affairs at Florida International University, has been named senior vice president for academic and student affairs.

Mark Blegen, dean of health sciences at St. Catherine University, will become provost and vice president for academic affairs at Carroll University in January.

Paul Hernandez, chief diversity officer at Lansing Community College, has been named the first vice president for academic and student affairs at Mount Wachusett Community College.

Cheree Williams, interim vice president for academic affairs at Lanier Technical College, has been named vice president for academic affairs at Georgia Piedmont Technical College.

Other top administrators

Appointments

Andrea L. Angel, associate vice chancellor for alumni and development at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, will become vice president for university advancement/chief executive of the Foundation at Indiana State University on November 12.

Cheryl Crounse, associate vice president and campaign manager at Salem State University, has been named vice president of institutional advancement and executive director of the Foundation.

James Davis, deputy attorney general for civil litigation for the state of Texas, will become vice president for legal affairs at the University of Texas at Austin on November 19.

Russell J. Mumper, vice provost for academic affairs at the University of Georgia, will become vice president for research and economic development at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa on January 1.

Joel Pogodzinski, chief financial officer at Marquette University, has been named senior vice president and chief operating officer.

Resignations

Dave Lawlor, executive vice president for operations at Marquette University, has resigned.

Deans

Appointments

Robert Sackstein, a professor of dermatology and medicine and co-director of the Glycoscience Center at Harvard University Medical School, has been named dean of the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine and senior vice president for health affairs at Florida International University.

Andrew Bean, associate dean and professor of neurobiology and anatomy at McGovern Medical School at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, has been named dean of the Graduate School at Rush University.

Chris Hochstetler, executive director of the arts organization Kaneko, in Omaha, has been named dean of innovation and creativity at Hastings College.

Linda Osterlund, vice provost and professor of counseling and family therapy at Regis University, has been named academic dean of the Rueckert-Hartman College for Health Professions.

Department chairs

Appointments

Tammy L. Haut Donahue, an adjunct professor of biomedical and mechanical engineering at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, has been named head of the new department of biomedical engineering.

David Harkins, a visiting assistant professor of chemistry at Lee University, has been named an assistant professor of chemistry and chair of natural sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences at University of Mobile.

Kim Perlak, assistant chair of guitar at Berklee College of Music, has been named the first female chair of guitar.

Mónica Rivera, a professor-of-practice in architecture at Washington University in St. Louis, has been named chair of graduate architecture in the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts.

Janell Watson, a professor of French at Virginia Tech, has been named chair of modern and classical languages and literatures.

Other administrators

Appointments

Rebecca L. Brown, chief of staff to the dean of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, has been named associate vice chancellor and chief of staff to the chancellor-designate at Washington University in St. Louis.

Ken Cowan, director of the Fred and Pamela Buffett Cancer Center and the Eppley Institute for Research in Cancer at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, plans to step down at the end of June.

Beth A. LaManna, a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, became campus security director at City University of New York Queens College on October 1. She is the first woman to hold this position.

Tracy Leavelle, associate dean for the humanities and fine arts in the College of Arts and Sciences and an associate professor of history at Creighton University, has been named the first director of the university’s Kingfisher Institute for the Liberal Arts and Professions.

William Rychel, offensive coordinator and offensive line coach at Savannah State University, has been named the first head football coach at St. Thomas University.

Julie Weaver, a financial aid counselor at McDaniel College, has been named financial wellness coordinator.

Faculty

Appointments

David Carter, a recent doctoral recipient from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, has been named an assistant professor of silviculture at Virginia Tech. He will also serve as co-director of the Forest Productivity Cooperative, an international partnership between Virginia Tech, North Carolina State University, the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, in Brazil, and the Universidad de Concepción, in Chile.

Carrie Dyer, an assistant professor of graphic design at Augusta University and founder of CloudWhale Design, has been named an associate professor of graphic design at High Point University.

Emily Gerhold, an assistant professor of art history at Henderson State University, has been named an assistant professor of art history and director of the Sechrest Gallery of Art at High Point University.

Thomas Pingel, an assistant professor of geography at Northern Illinois University, has been named an associate professor of geography in the Data and Decisions Destination Area at Virgina Tech.

Emily Reynolds, an adjunct instructor of interior design at the Art Institute of Raleigh-Durham, has been named a visiting assistant professor of interior design at High Point University.

Huiyuan Zhu, a recent doctoral recipient from Brown University, has been named an assistant professor of chemical engineering at Virginia Tech.

American Association of Colleges of Nursing Awards

Paul Clark, an assistant professor of nursing at the University of Louisville, received the 2018 Novice Faculty Excellence in Clinical Teaching Award.

Jennie De Gagne, an associate professor in the School of Nursing at Duke University, received the 2018 Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Excellence Award.

Sherry Farra, an associate professor in the College of Nursing and Health Teaching at Wright State University, received the 2018 Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Excellence Award.

Ann Marie P. Mauro, associate dean and director of the Center for Educational Research and Innovation at the School of Nursing at Rutgers University at Newark, received the 2018 Excellence and Innovation in Teaching Award.

Tiffany Nielsen, an assistant clinical professor at the University of California at Irvine, received the 2018 Novice Faculty Excellence in Didactic Teaching Award.

Julie Sochalski, an associate professor of nursing and associate dean of academic programs at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, received the 2018 Lois Capps Policy Luminary Award.

Organizations

Appointments

Christiana Thornton, president of the New Hampshire Bankers Association, became president and chief executive of the New Hampshire Higher Education Assistance Foundation on October 3.

Jeffrey C. Wang, a professor of orthopaedic surgery and co-director of the Spine Center at University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine, has been named president of the North American Spine Society.

Deaths

The Rev. Thomas McShane, a professor of physics at Creighton University for 50 years, died on October 17. He was 89.

Josephine Ott, professor emerita of French language and literature at Smith College, died on October 20. She was 92. Ott came to the college as a French instructor in 1958 and worked her way up to become a full professor in 1975. She retired from that role in 1992.

Johannes Weertman, professor emeritus of materials science and engineering at Northwestern University, died on October 13. He was 93. Weertman joined Northwestern in 1959 as an associate professor of materials science. He worked at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in the 1950s, and the United Kingdom Antarctic Place-Names Committee honored his contributions in 1960 by establishing “Weertman Island,” a 3.5-mile-long island off of the Antarctic coast. He co-wrote a textbook, Elementary Dislocation Theory (Macmillan, 1964) with his wife Julia Randall Weertman.

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