Jin Wang

Dean, Bill and Vieve Gore School of Business, Westminster College

Jin Wang recently joined Westminster College as Dean of the Bill and Vieve Gore School of Business.  Prior to joining Westminster College Jin was a tenured Professor of Economics, Associate Provost and Dean of Academic Services at The University of Tampa. Prior to joining The University of Tampa in 2007, he served as Professor of Economics and Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Rowan University between 2003 and 2007, Professor of Economics and Associate Dean of the College of Letters and Science at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, where he worked for 11 years.

Jin Wang received his B.A. in Economics from Zhongshan University in 1982, M.A. in Economics from Ohio University in 1984, and Ph.D. in Economics from Kansas State University in 1989. In the summer of 2005 he completed the Management Development Program at Harvard University. In June 2010 he completed the Millennium Leadership Initiative sponsored by AASCU. He also served as President of the Council of Chinese American Deans and Presidents. His research has focused on China’s Economic Development and US-China trade relations. He has also developed and led international programs.

Katie Conboy

Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, Stonehill College

Katie Conboy has served as chief academic officer at Stonehill College for the last decade.  She graduated from the University of Kansas in 1981 with a Bachelor of Arts (honors) in English and completed her Ph.D. in English at the University of Notre Dame in 1986, specializing in history of the novel and feminist theory.  In 1987, she joined the faculty of the English Department at Stonehill, and she attained the rank of Professor in 1998.  As a faculty member, she published numerous articles and co-edited Writing on the Body: Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory (Columbia UP, 1997).  She chaired the English Department briefly before accepting a full-time administrative role in January 2000, and she currently serves as Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs.  In this role, she has been responsible for a complete revision of the General Education curriculum, the implementation of curricular innovations such as learning communities and interdisciplinary programs, the expansion of Stonehill’s international program participation, the extension of undergraduate research opportunities, and the development of a robust career services office.  In addition, she has overseen extraordinary growth of the faculty, improved faculty development opportunities, and enhanced grant activity in support of the curriculum and the faculty.

M. David Rudd

Dean of Social and Behavioral Science, University of Utah

M. David Rudd is Dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Utah and scientific director for the National Center for Veterans Studies at the U. His undergraduate degree is from Princeton University. He completed his doctoral training at the University of Texas-Austin and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in cognitive therapy at the Beck Institute in Philadelphia under the direction of Aaron T. Beck. He is a Diplomate of the American Board of Professional Psychology and a Fellow of three professional societies, including the American Psychological Association (Division 12 and Division 29), the International Association of Suicide Research, and the Academy of Cognitive Therapy (a founding fellow). He was recently elected a Distinguished Practitioner and Scholar of the National Academies of Practice in Psychology. In addition to his clinical work, Dr. Rudd is an active researcher with over 170 publications. He is currently conducting a $1.97 million clinical trial for suicidal soldiers at Fort Carson, Colorado. He has authored several books, including Treating Suicidal Behavior (2001, Guilford, 2^nd printing in 2004) and Suicide Science: Expanding the Boundaries (2001, Kluwer Academic Publishers), The Assessment and Management of Suicidality: A Pocket Guide (Professional Resource Press, 2006) and the recently released The Interpersonal Theory of Suicide (with Joiner, VanOrden, & Witte) from the American Psychological Association Press. His research has been recognized with awards both national and international.  He has served as a consultant to many organizations nationally and internationally, including the United States Air Force, the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense and the Beijing Suicide Prevention and Research Center. Dr. Rudd serves on a number of editorial boards, is past Chair of the Texas State Board of Examiners of Psychologists, past President of the Texas Psychological Association, past President of Division 12 Section VII of the American Psychological Association, past Past-President of the American Association of Suicidology, a previous members of the APA Council of Representatives, and currently serves as vice-president of the PDV Foundation. Dr. Rudd has testified four times before the U.S. Congress, both House and Senate, on issues related to veterans and suicide.

Robert Holyer

Senior Consultant, AGB Search

Robert Holyer is Senior Consultant with AGB Search.  Dr. Holyer received a BA from Bethel College (St. Paul, Minnesota), a BD from Yale Divinity School, and a PhD from the University of Cambridge. His academic specialty is the philosophy of religion; he has published on issues of religious epistemology, Pascal, Newman, C.S. Lewis, and, more recently, issues of punishment and forgiveness.  He has taught at the University of Virginia, Converse College, and Lyon College.  At the University of Virginia he was recognized on the Dean’s List for Distinguished Teaching; at Lyon he received the Williamson Prize for Faculty Excellence.

Holyer has served as chief academic officer at Lyon College, Randolph-Macon College, and Presbyterian College.  He also served as Acting President at Randolph-Macon.  The focus of his administrative work has been strengthening liberal education, curricular and pedagogical renewal, assessment, faculty development, student research, planning, and international education.  He has served both as a board member and as chair of the board of the Wye Seminars; he was also a coordinator of the Council of Independent Colleges New CAO Workshop.  He is a frequent presenter and writer on issues in higher education.

Sara Varhus

Vice President for Academic Affairs, Nazareth College

Sara Varhus has been Vice President for Academic Affairs at Nazareth College since January, 2007. Prior to that, she was for ten years Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at SUNY at Oswego, where she also served as Director of the Honors Program in Liberal Studies and Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences. She received her B.A. at Rockford College and her PH.D., at the University of Rochester. She also participated in the HERS Summer Institute for Women in Higher Education Administration at Bryn Mawr College and the Harvard Institute for Educational Management. She has been involved in a number of interdisciplinary curricular projects, one of which was sponsored FIPSE, and one of which was part of the Integrative Learning Project, sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation and AAC&U. She has been editor of the Forum for Honors, the refereed journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council, and she served on the Executive Board of that organization. For the Council for Colleges of Arts and Sciences, she chaired the Committee on Comprehensive Institutions, and twice served as a Facilitator for the New Deans Seminar. She has presented frequently at meetings of NCHC, CCAS, AAC&U, and AAHE, and she has been a consultant to honors programs and interdisciplinary projects. She has written and presented scholarly essays on Restoration and Eighteenth-century literature.

Stephanie Fabritius

Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the College, Centre College

Stephanie Fabritius is a professor of biology, vice president for academic affairs, and dean of the College at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. Prior to joining Centre College in 2006, she was a professor, associate provost, and director of the Paideia Program at Southwestern University, where she worked for more than 17 years. While at Southwestern University, she held the Lillian Nelson Pratt Chair in the Sciences from 2000 to 2004, and in 1997 received the Exemplary Teaching Award from the Board of Higher Education and Ministry of the United Methodist Church. In 2002-2003, she was an American Council on Education (ACE) Fellow at Bowdoin College.

Fabritius’ research has focused upon mating systems and parental care patterns in grassland nesting songbirds and on sex ratio manipulation in parasitic wasps. Her areas of teaching have included introductory biology, behavioral ecology, ecology, natural history of the vertebrates, evolution, and conducting collaborative research with undergraduate students.

She holds a B.S. in biology from Pepperdine University and a Ph.D. from Purdue University.

Pamela Monaco

Vice President, Southwestern College Professional Studies

Pamela Monaco recently moved to Southwestern College Professional Studies taking a position as the Vice President.  She was previously the founding Dean of Arts and Sciences at Brandman University, a new university dedicated to serving working adults. In this role, she was responsible for academic programs, assessment of student learning and faculty within Arts and Sciences at 26 distributed campuses. In addition, she led the general education revision taskforce and was the academic director of the Veterans²College program. She has previously held academic leadership posts at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the University of Maryland University College. She earned her BBA from George Washington University and her Ph.D. in English and Theatre from the Catholic University of America.

Marc Roy

Provost, Goucher College

Marc Roy became Goucher’s Provost in 2007. He previously served as the Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He began his career as a biology faculty member at Beloit College, Beloit Wisconsin. Marc earned his PhD in neuroscience from the University of Wisconsin.

Laura Behling

Associate Provost of Faculty Affairs and Interdisciplinary Programs, Butler University

Laura Behling serves as the Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs and Interdisciplinary Programs at Butler University.  In this role, she has primary responsibility for the University’s new general education program, faculty development, and interdisciplinary program development.  Prior to joining Butler, she was a faculty member in and chair of the English Department at Gustavus Adolphus College, where she also served for four years as the Director of the John S. Kendall Center for Engaged Learning, the college’s faculty development center.  Behling received her undergraduate degree in English from Kalamazoo College; a master’s degree in science and medical journalism from Boston University, and her PhD in English and American Literature from the Claremont Graduate School.  In 2003, Behling was named a Fulbright Scholar and taught at Palacky University in Olomouc, the Czech Republic.  In 2006, she participated in the Faculty Fellows program, sponsored by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) and Institute for Experiential Learning, serving as an intern at the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, Washington, D.C.  She also was selected for the NEH Summer Institute focused on “Literature, Medicine, and Culture” (2002).   She currently serves as a Consultant-Evaluator, Higher Learning Commission/North Central Association and previously was elected to the executive committee of the Modern Language Association’s Division on Teaching as a Profession and served as an MLA Delegate on Disability Issues in the Profession. Her scholarly works include two monographs: the first entitled The Masculine Woman in America, 1890-1935 (Illinois UP 2001); and the second, Gross Anatomies: Fictions of the Physical in American Literature and Culture (Susquehanna UP 2008).  She’s also edited a Civil-War era composite memoir, entitled Hospital Transports: A Memoir of the Embarkation of the Sick and Wounded from the Peninsula of Virginia in 1863 (SUNY UP 2005/2006).  Most recently, the Council for Undergraduate Research published her edited collection of essays entitled Reading, Writing, and Research: Undergraduate Students as Scholars in Literary Studies (2010)–a volume that developed out of her own work with students on projects focused first, on Richard Wright’s 1940 novel, Native Son, and second, a museum exhibition of World War I United States propaganda posters.  Behling also has presented and published articles nationally and internationally on topics such as faculty development, undergraduate research/scholarship/creative work, administrative leadership, medical humanities, and American literature and culture.

Thomas Meyer

Dean of Academic Affairs, Wolfson Campus, Miami Dade College

Thomas W. Meyer, Ph.D., Dean of Academic Affairs at the Wolfson Campus, has over 20 years of teaching and training experience, with eleven years in management or administrative roles.  Prior to becoming the Academic Dean of the Wolfson Campus, Dr. Meyer served in various roles.  Starting as a professor of English, he taught reading, writing, grammar, and speech, and garnered experience in testing, curriculum development, teacher training, educational technology, and grant writing and management.  He later became Department Chairperson of English as a Second Language and Foreign Languages where he implemented the first AS degree in Translation/Interpretation in the United States.  He was later appointed Associate Dean of Academic Affairs overseeing the Chairpersons of the academic departments and deliberating over students’ academic issues.  Also important to mention is his experience in the private sector as a management consultant in the area of organizational development and leadership training for Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) as well as in the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries.  This unique blending of academic and corporate experience gives Dr. Meyer keen insight into implementation of best practices, performance improvement, and quality enhancement. Currently reporting to Dr. Meyer are over 130 full-time faculty, nine academic departments with Chairpersons, two college-wide schools with Directors, and three college-wide programs with Directors.  As the chief academic officer for the campus, Dr. Meyer oversees all issues related to accreditation, grants, faculty initiatives, curriculum, enrollment management, and the academic budget.