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PEOPLE IN ACADEME
NYU Dean to Devote His Sabbatical to Expanding U. of the People
B; P;;;; M;;;;;;;
BRIEFS
;;Martha D. Saunders, president of the University of Southern Mississippi, has announced
she will resign effective June
30 for personal reasons. She
is credited with increasing enrollment and private
giving, leading the university through tough
economic times, and
appointing an oil-spill response team,
among other things.
An internal audit has uncovered
a shortfall of more than $1-mil-
lion in the athletics department,
but she said at a news conference, “Not everything is about
athletics.” Ms. Saunders, who
has led Southern Mississippi
for ;ve years, plans to join the
faculty of the university’s Gulf
Coast campus this fall.
;; Wyatt R. (Rory) Hume, who
had hoped to turn United Arab
Emirates University into one of
the world’s top 100 research institutions, has resigned as the
university’s provost. Mr. Hume
found that funds from the national government fell short of
expectations, and he also alienated many Emirati faculty members by ;lling top positions with
expatriates. A former provost of
the University of California, he
took the post in the United Arab
Emirates in 2008.
DANN Y RAWLS
D;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;re- search on how social and economic op-
portunities are distributed
has prompted him to get in-
volved in bringing college-
level teaching to students
who need an education that
costs next to nothing.
“Spreading education to
populations that currently
don’t have access to it might
do some good in the world,”
he says.
That reasoning led Mr.
Conley, a prominent sociol-
ogist, to accept the post of dean of
arts and sciences at the online Uni-
versity of the People, which has ac-
cess as its motivating rationale.
The international, tuition-free,
nonpro;t institution, founded in
2009, is a pioneering effort in elearning and peer-to-peer learning. Using open-source technology and coursework provided gratis by well-regarded institutions,
it offers two- and four-year degree
programs in business administration and computer science. It has
formed partnerships with Yale
University, New York University,
and Hewlett-Packard, and to date
has enrolled 1,400 students from
130 countries.
“Higher education is our best
cultural product, as far as I’m concerned,” says Mr. Conley. “We also
export our less-impressive cultural
products, McDonald’s and Hollywood and so forth, so I think it’s a
great idea to help folks who want
to help themselves to increase their
skill sets and help their own countries.”
Starting Gate: Birth Weight
and Life Chances; and Else-
where, U. S. A.: How We Got
From the Company Man,
Family Dinners, and the Af-
;uent Society to the Home
Of;ce, BlackBerry Moms,
and Economic Anxiety.
Mr. Conley throws fur-
ther light on his belief in
educational access in his
Was he surprised that NYU
would approve his taking on even
more work than he is already re-
sponsible for, at University of the
People? Mr. Conley says: “I asked
the president of NYU about it, and
he gave the thumbs up. So I assume
they’re happy about it.” NYU’s pres-
ident, John Sexton, is one of ;ve
global university leaders to serve on
a newly formed Presidents Council
that will advise the free university.
LISA ACKERMAN
Dalton Conley
And NYU administrators already
knew of Mr. Conley’s interest in
the online model. He had just acted as a go-between—a “midwife,”
he says—for an agreement in which
NYU will each year take some
transfer students from University of
the People, particularly at NYU’s
small Abu Dhabi campus.
Working on that effort brought
Mr. Conley into contact with Shai
Reshef, the founder and president of
the online university.
As University of the People’s
dean of arts and sciences, Mr. Conley will work to expand course offerings. “We need to focus on pragmatic degrees that are going to help
individuals in their societies, in
developing countries,” he says. He
hopes the next two majors will be in
health, to train nurses and commu-nity-health workers, and education,
to train teachers.
He says he and fellow administrators are not only waiting for accreditation, which they hope to gain
soon, but are preparing the institution for what may follow. He says:
“It could be that the ;oodgates
open, and we have 100,000 students
all of a sudden.”
JOB MOVES
;;Michael F. Adams, president
of the University of Georgia since
1997, will retire in June 2013.
;;Pradeep K. Khosla, dean of
Carnegie Mellon University’s Col-
lege of Engineering, has been
selected as chancellor of the
University of California at San
Diego, effective August 1, pend-
ing approval by the Board of Re-
gents. He will succeed Marye
Anne Fox, who announced her
resignation last year.
;; Daniel Szpiro, associate dean
of executive education at Cor-
nell University’s Samuel Curtis
Johnson Graduate School of
Management, will become dean
of the Jack Welch Management
Institute at Strayer University.
He starts on June 11.
Like other administrators at University of the People, Mr. Conley
will work pro bono. He says he can
do that because he is about to end a
term as NYU’s dean for the social
sciences, and now has a year’s sabbatical.
But the 42-year-old scholar’s
plate will remain full. In addition
to being a professor of sociology,
The titles of a few of his six
books re;ect his populist bent: Be-
ing Black, Living in the Red; The QUOTED “We haven’t seen the vision and true leadership we deserve.” —Garret (Hank) Danos, chairman of Louisiana State University’s Board of Supervisors, explaining why the board ;red the system president, John Lombardi, as quoted by the Associated Press.
Criminologist Joins Penn State to Ensure Openness About Crime
I;;;;;;;;my professional ca- reer at Pyramid Health Care, a therapeutic facility for juve-
niles, many of whom had suffered
mental, physical, and sexual abuse.
I was able to play a part in victim
recovery, and to really develop an
appreciation and passion for that
line of work.
WHY I MOVED
IN MEMORIAM
; LeRoy T. Walker,
who was chancellor of
North Carolina Central
University from 1983
to 1986, died on April
23 at age 93. He start-
ed at North Carolina
Central in 1945 as a football and
basketball coach, then started
a track team and trained many
star players. He was the ;rst Afri-
can-American to coach an Ameri-
can men’s team at the Olympic
Games and to lead the U.S.
Olympic Committee. Mr. Walker
was also the university’s vice
chancellor from 1974 to 1983.
AP PHOTO
Gabriel R.
Gates
Age: 29
New job:
Compli-
ance co-
ordinator,
Pennsylva-
nia State
University
at University Park, charged with
ensuring that Penn State complies
with the Clery Act, a federal law
requiring universities to disclose
information about campus crime
Previous position: Senior ;nan-
cial-compliance analyst, Maersk
Line Ltd., a company based in
PENNSYLVANIA STATE U.
Norfolk, Va., that manages logis-
tics for government-owned and
commercial cargo ships
Highest degree: Bachelor’s de-
gree in criminology with a con-
centration in forensic accounting
from Mount Aloysius College
ment to Penn State. This position
had such potential to have an imme-
diate impact. I’m not saying my last
job didn’t have an impact, but it’s
certainly a different one. At my last
job, I may have found we’re missing
a ;xed asset worth $50,000. In this
position, I could potentially save a
victim of a future crime.
