Finalists for dean of the West Virginia University Eberly College of Arts and Sciences will visit the main campus beginning Wednesday (Feb. 11).

“We are bringing three tremendously exciting individuals to campus,” said Dan Robison, dean of the Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design and chair of the screening committee. “As the largest and most academically diversified college on campus, Eberly needs a leader with both vision and exceptional leadership abilities. All of these candidates have both.”

Candidates will spend two days and one evening in Morgantown and will meet with administration, faculty, staff, and students.

The three candidates, and the dates of their visits, are:

Christopher P. Long (Feb. 11-13)
Long is associate dean for graduate and undergraduate education and professor of philosophy and classics in the college of the liberal arts at Penn State. He completed his bachelor’s degree at Wittenberg University and his master’s and doctorate at the New School of Social Research in New York. He joined the philosophy faculty at Penn State in 2004 and served as director of graduate studies in philosophy from 2005 to 2010. He was appointed as associate dean for undergraduate education in 2010 and added graduate education to his portfolio in 2013.

Long’s publications in ancient Greek and contemporary continental philosophy include three books: The Ethics of Ontology: Rethinking an Aristotelian Legacy (SUNY 2004), Aristotle On the Nature of Truth (Cambridge 2010), and an enhanced digital book, Socratic and Platonic Political Philosophy: Practicing a Politics of Reading (Cambridge 2014). The digital platform of the enhanced digital book enables readers to engage directly with the author in an online community. Long is also co-founder of the Public Philosophy Journal, a project that has received more than $780,000 of funding from the Mellon Foundation to create an innovative online space of digital scholarship and communication.

To learn more about Long’s administrative approach and his recent research in philosophy, digital scholarly communication, and the educational use of social media technologies, visit his blog: www.cplong.org. He is the host of the Digital Dialogue podcast (thedigitaldialogue.com) and can be reached on Twitter @cplong and @deancplong.

Charles J. Brody (Feb. 16-18)
Brody is professor of sociology and associate dean for academic affairs (since 2010) in the college of liberal arts & sciences at University of North Carolina Charlotte where he is also an affiliate faculty member for both the organizational science and public policy Ph.D. programs. He served as a department chair at UNC Charlotte from 2001-09 and was an American Council on Education Fellow in 2005-06. Prior to UNC Charlotte, Brody was a faculty member and chaired the department of sociology at Tulane University.

As associate dean, Brody upgraded assessment practices in the college of liberal arts & sciences, revised its promotion and tenure policies to incorporate the scholarship of engagement, established a university-wide project to enhance interdisciplinary social and behavioral science research, and implemented a Quality Enhancement Plan for the campus that focuses on the academic engagement of first-year students.

Brody works with graduate students and maintains an active research agenda in the sociology of work and organizations. He has published more than 25 articles and chapters in top journals in his field including the American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review and Social Forces. He has also served on the editorial boards of Public Opinion Quarterly and Social Science Research.

Brody received his bachelor’s degree from Loyola University in New Orleans, master’s from University of New Orleans, and doctorate from the University of Arizona. All three degrees are in sociology.

Cynthia Y. Young (Feb. 23-25)
Young is currently an associate dean in the college of sciences and a professor of mathematics at the University of Central Florida. She has authored or co-authored more than 60 books, conference proceedings, and journal papers and for the last 16 years has secured sustained federal funding to support her research in the areas of laser propagation through random media and of improving student learning in mathematics. Her atmospheric propagation research has been recognized nationally by the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award. In 2007 she was named a Fellow of the International Society for Optics and Photonics.

Young has 12 years of university leadership experience at the program, college, and university levels. In her current role as associate dean she provides leadership in the areas of research and external funding, faculty affairs, assessment of undergraduate and graduate programs, and STEM initiatives. She has designed and implemented several programs to facilitate faculty professional development including a seed grants programs which incentivizes interdisciplinary collaboration across disciplines (spanning the humanities, social and behavioral sciences, and the biological, physical, and computational sciences). Prior to serving as associate dean she served the president of UCF as the NCAA faculty athletics representative and as the co-director of the EXCEL program, which has demonstrated increased graduation rates through learning communities.

She received her bachelor’s degree in mathematics education from the University of North Carolina and her master’s in electrical engineering and doctorate in applied mathematics from the University of Washington.

For the full position description, see http://employmentservices.hr.wvu.edu/wvu_jobs/non-classified_positions/dean-of-eberly-college-of-arts-and-sciences.

The new dean will report to Provost Joyce McConnell. The university anticipates a start date in summer 2015.

-WVU-

ac/02/05/15

CONTACT: Joyce McConnell, WVU provost
304.293.7119; joyce.mcconnell@mail.wvu.edu

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