A&S dean candidates to visit this month

9:38 a.m., Feb. 9, 2005--After conducting a national search, the search committee for a new dean of the College of Arts and Sciences has narrowed the field to two candidates, Timothy K. Barnekov, committee chairperson has announced.

Finalists are Tom Apple, vice provost for administration, dean of graduate education and professor of chemistry at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., and Michael R. Halleran, divisional dean of arts and humanities and professor of classics in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle. Both candidates will visit the campus later this month.

Bobby Gempesaw, vice provost for academic programs and planning and international programs, has been serving as interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences since Aug.1, 2004, when the previous dean, Mark A. Huddleston, accepted the presidency of Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio.

Tom Apple

Apple earned his bachelor’s degree in biology from Pennsylvania State University in 1976 and his doctorate in physical chemistry from the University of Delaware in 1982. He was a postdoctoral research fellow at Iowa State University from 1981-83.

He joined the chemistry faculty at the University of Nebraska as an assistant professor in 1983 and was named an associate professor there in 1988. He became associate professor of chemistry at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1991 and was named a full professor there in 1997. He chaired the Department of Chemistry from 1997-2001. That year, Apple was named dean of graduate education and the following year he gained the title of vice provost for administration. In addition, he served as interim vice provost for institute diversity from 2002-03, and since 2004, he has been the NCAA faculty representative.

Apple’s research in zeolite materials and polymeric materials has been funded by 12 grants from the National Science Foundation, as well as support from the National Institutes of Health and others, and he is the author or coauthor of 55 articles in professional journals. He has served as a National Science Foundation review panelist since 1993 and has presented numerous lectures at professional meetings across the country, including several at UD.

Apple is a member of the Council of Graduate Studies, the American Chemical Society, the Center for Chemical Research and the Society for Applied Spectroscopy.

His honors include RPI’s Trustees Outstanding Teacher Award in 1996 and the University of Nebraska Parents Association Teaching Award in 1990 and 1991.

Michael R. Halleran

Raised in New York City, Halleran earned his undergraduate degree summa cum laude from Kenyon College in 1975 and his master’s and doctoral degrees from Harvard University in 1978 and 1981, respectively. All his degrees are in the classics.

A member of the University of Washington faculty since 1983, he served as his department’s graduate program coordinator from 1988-91 and chairperson from 1991-97. Halleran’s primary area of scholarship is ancient Greek drama, and he has published widely on Greek literature and culture. Among his books are Stagecraft in Euripides (1985), The Heracles of Euripides: Translated with Introduction, Notes and Interpretative Essay (1988), and Euripides: Hippolytus, with Translation and Commentary (1995). From 1988-99, he served as an advisory editor of the Focus Classical Library and, since its inception in 1990, has been on the advisory board of the Bryn Mawr Classical Review, the field’s first electronic review journal.

As divisional dean of arts and humanities, a position he has held since 1997, Halleran oversees 16 academic departments, the Burke Museum for Natural History and Culture, the Language Learning Center, the Henry Art Gallery, Meany Hall for the Performing Arts and the Simpson Center for the Humanities. He played a key role in developing the Simpson Center, with its commitment to interdisciplinary scholarship, curricular development and public humanities, and he helped to create the Center for Digital and Experimental Arts, which became the first program in the country to offer a doctorate in this field.

Halleran has served on the Imagining America National Advisory Board and is currently on the University of Washington Rome Center Advisory Board and is the sole faculty member of the University of Washington Medicine Board. He also serves on the University Budget Committee, University Enrollment Management Committee, Information Technology Advisory Committee and University Press Committee.

College of Arts and Sciences

The College of Arts and Sciences, UD’s largest college, is organized under the dean, with three associate deans responsible for departments and programs in three general areas: arts and humanities (eight departments and four programs and centers), social science and history (six departments and 12 programs and centers) and natural science and mathematics (10 departments and seven programs and centers).

In fall 2004, the college’s enrollment totaled 8,303, with 7,041 undergraduate students and 1,262 graduate students.

Other members of the search committee are Stephen A. Bernhardt, Kirkpatrick Chair of Writing in the Department of English; Virginia Bradley, chairperson of the Department of Fine Arts and Visual Communications; Philip Broadbridge, chairperson of the Department of Mathematical Sciences; Maxine Colm, vice president for administration; George Hadjipanayis, Richard B. Murray Professor and chairperson of the Department of Physics and Astronomy; Wunyabari Maloba, associate professor of history and chairperson of the President’s Commission on Racial and Cultural Diversity; Robin W. Morgan, dean of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources; Charles G. Riordan, chairperson of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry; Havidan Rodriguez, professor of sociology and director of the Disaster Research Center; Karen Rosenberg, chairperson of the Department of Anthropology; and Cynthia Schmidt-Cruz, associate professor of foreign languages and literatures and director of Latin American Studies.

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