Transitions: Reed College Selects New Chief, Vice President for Academic Affairs Named at Pitzer College

Chief executives

Appointments

Audrey Bilger, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the college at Pomona College, has been named president of Reed College. She will be the first woman to lead the college and will replace Hugh Porter, who has served as acting president since John Kroger stepped down last year.

Tex Boggs, interim provost and vice president for academic affairs at the University of Maine at Fort Kent since August 2018, has been named interim president and provost of the university. He will replace John Short, who plans to retire as president at the end of the academic year.

Kelli R. Brown, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at Georgia College and State University, will become chancellor of Western Carolina University on July 1. She will replace Alison Morrison-Shetlar, who has been serving as interim chancellor since David O. Belcher’s death in June 2018.

E. LaBrent Chrite, dean of the Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver, will become president of Bethune-Cookman University on July 1. He will replace Hubert L. Grimes, who has served as interim president since July 2017.

Debbie Cottrell, vice president for academic affairs at Texas Lutheran University, has been named president. She will succeed Stuart Dorsey, who plans to retire.

Felecia M. Nave, provost and vice chancellor at North Carolina Central University, has been named president of Alcorn State University. She will succeed Alfred Rankins Jr., who left to become higher-education commissioner for Mississippi.

Marlene Tromp, campus provost and executive vice chancellor at the University of California at Santa Cruz, will become president of Boise State University on July 1. She will replace Martin Schimpf, who has served as interim president since Bob Kustra’s retirement last June.

Ward Ulmer, interim president of Walden University, has been named to the post permanently.

Chief academic officers

Appointments

Peggy Agouris, dean of the College of Science at George Mason University, will become provost at the College of William & Mary on July 1.

David Carter, acting vice president for academic affairs at Claremont Lincoln University, has been named to the post permanently.

Kristopher Copeland, executive dean of liberal arts at North Lake College, will become provost of the West Campus of Tulsa Community College on June 3.

Saúl Jiménez-Sandoval, dean of the College of Arts and Humanities at California State University at Fresno, will become provost and vice president for academic affairs on July 22.

Sacha Kopp, former dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Stony Brook University, has been named senior vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

Allen M. Omoto, associate provost for academic affairs and director of the Institute for Research on Social Issues at Claremont Graduate University, will become vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty at Pitzer College on July 1.

Angela Sivadon, dean of the School of Nursing at Tulsa Community College, has been named provost of the college’s Metro Campus.

Greg Stone, provost of the Metro Campus of Tulsa Community College, has been named provost of the college’s Southeast Campus.

Andrew A. Workman, interim president of Roger Williams University, will become provost at Widener University in July.

Other top administrators

Appointments

Josh Brand, managing director of global delivery at Harvard Business Publishing, will become vice president for external relations at Bentley University at June 17.

Leslie Doyle, director of service, diversity and social justice at Fontbonne University, has been named chief inclusion officer at Rockhurst University.

Shawn J. Farr, director of finance and board secretary for the Carlisle Area School District, in Pennsylvania, became chief financial officer at Central Penn College on May 6.

Dania Matos, deputy chief diversity officer at the College of William & Mary, will become associate chancellor of diversity, equity, and inclusion at the University of California at Merced in July.

Timothy J. McDonough, vice president for government and public affairs at the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, will become vice chancellor for communications and marketing at the University System of Maryland on May 30.

J. Martin Scholtz, executive associate vice president for research at Texas A&M University, will become vice president for research at the University of Iowa on June 28.

Prashant Shinde, chief information officer at Chicago State University, has been named chief information officer at Oakton Community College.

Jeremiah Shinn, associate vice president for student affairs at Boise State University, has been named vice president for student affairs at Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge.

Jake Tanksley, senior human-resources business partner and director of staff development at Syracuse University, has been named vice president for human resources at Lincoln University, in Pennsylvania.

Mary Ann Villarreal, associate vice president for strategic initiatives at California State University at Fullerton, will become vice president for equity, diversity and inclusion at the University of Utah on July 1.

Michael Wark, assistant vice chancellor for external relations at University of Washington at Tacoma, has been named vice president for strategic advancement at Pierce College.

Dean Weber, director of the Office of Internal Audit and Risk Assessment for the Pennsylvania State University system, has been named chief audit officer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Deans

Appointments

Jane Aiken, a professor of law and former vice dean of the Law Center at Georgetown University, has been named dean of the School of Law at Wake Forest University.

Sam Beldona, dean of the Barowsky School of Business at Dominican University of California, will become dean of the Kania School of Management at the University of Scranton on July 1.

Amy Green Deines, dean of Cranbrook Academy of Art, will become dean of the College of Art and Design at Lesley University in July.

Scott Edmiston, a professor of the practice and chair of the theater department at Northeastern University, will become dean of the theater division in the Boston Conservatory at Berklee on August 1.

Safiya George, associate professor and assitant dean of research in the Capstone College of Nursing at the University of Alabama, will become dean of the Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing at Florida Atlantic University on July 8.

Brian Primack, dean of the Honors College at the University of Pittsburgh, will become dean of the College of Education and Health Professions at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville on July 1.

Other administrators

Appointments

Matt Dean, interim director of athletics at Rhodes College since October, has been named to the post permanently.

Geoffrey E. Eaton, president of the Mid-Manhattan Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, has been named director of community affairs and diversity at Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine and Touro College of Pharmacy in Harlem.

Margaret Lawrence, director of programming for the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth College, has been named the director of programming for the Moss Arts Center at Virginia Tech.

Sonoe Nakasone, lead librarian for metadata technologies at North Carolina State University, has been named community archivist for the Southern Historical Collection at the Wilson Special Collections Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Sarah Poggione, associate professor and chair of political science in the College of Arts and Sciences at Ohio University, will become associate dean of students, instruction, and curriculum for the college on July 1.

Faculty

Appointments

Alondra Nelson, a professor of sociology at Columbia University, will become a professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study on July 1.

Deaths

Sara Baker, faculty member emerita in the department of music at Howard Payne University, died on January 29. She was 89.

Elwyn Berlekamp, professor emeritus of mathematics and of electrical engineering and computer sciences at the University of California at Berkeley, died on April 9. He was 78. In 1973, he co-founded a consulting company for error-correcting codes, Cyclotomics, and worked with his colleagues to invent and patent decoding algorithms. Berlekamp’s work in encoding and decoding became the NASA standard for space communications. He also worked with Mathematical Sciences Research Institute and Bell Telephone Laboratories and founded a hedge fund, Berkeley Quantitative. Berlekamp is known for his work the theory of combinatorial games and wrote Algebraic Coding Theory (McGraw-Hill, 1968), among other books.

Joe A. Hewitt, university librarian emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, died on December 19. He was 80. Hewitt attended the university as an undergraduate and returned as associate university librarian for technical services in 1975. Hewitt oversaw the development of the university library’s first web page and helped to establish a North Carolina Literary Festival.

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Correction (5/3/2019, 10:01 a.m.): The original version of this article identified the next provost of Widener University incorrectly. Andrew A. Workman, not Dale Scalise-Smith, has been named the new provost.