|
Carolyn R. Newton has been named Academic Vice President and Provost
at Berea College. As Berea's chief academic officer, Dr. Newton
will have responsibility for leading, planning, coordinating, and evaluating
the educational and academic support programs of the College, and,
in the absence of the president, serve as the College's senior officer.
Dr. Newton also will collaborate with the Dean of the Faculty in the
recruitment, hiring, and professional development of the faculty. Dr.
Newton, whose appointment becomes effective August 2005, succeeds Dr.
David B. Porter.
In addition to serving a four-year term as Academic Vice President
and Provost, Dr. Porter, a psychologist whose scholarship has focused
on adolescent and adult learning, has taught in the College’s
Psychology Department. Following Dr. Newton’s appointment, Porter
will take a position as a senior scholar with the American Association
for Higher Education during the 2005-06 academic year, and then plans
to return to the Berea faculty in the fall of 2006 as a full-time teaching
member of the Psychology Department.
Dr. Newton comes to Berea from a twenty-six-year career at Kalamazoo
College in Michigan. As a Cell and Molecular Biologist, Dr. Newton’s
courses there included innovative uses of student journal clubs and
service-learning components. Dr. Newton’s research has focused
on the immune system of sharks and her more than two dozen research
presentations and publications have often included undergraduate
student researchers.
At Kalamazoo College, Newton served as Chair of the Biology Department
from 1990-94 and was the Associate Provost from 1998 to the present.
In her role as the Associate Provost, Dr. Newton led Kalamazoo’s
strategic planning process, developed and implemented a new faculty
orientation program, and served as the primary author of successful
grant proposals that resulted in nearly two million dollars for innovative
science education and research. As an American Council on Education
Fellow at Gettysburg College during the 2001-02 academic year, Newton
brings an informed understanding of the major challenges facing higher
education in America today.
Dr. Newton’s undergraduate degree in the biological sciences
is from Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, where she
graduated in 1973 with Highest Distinction. She holds a Ph.D. in Biophysical
Sciences from the State University of New York at Buffalo.
“As Berea College nears its 150th year, those of us who work
and learn here remain committed to its historic mission of learning,
labor, and service,” said Dr. Larry D. Shinn, president of the
College.
“
Because of the unique and distinctive roles which work experience
and service play in all students’ development at the College,
a central responsibility of the Provost is to integrate the learning,
labor, and service arenas across the entire College. In her role
as Academic Vice President and Provost, Dr Newton will help Berea
extend into the twenty-first century the College’s commitment
of educating servant-leaders for Appalachia and beyond.”
Dr. Newton and her husband, Gary, have a daughter, Melanie, who graduated
from Colby College in 2003 and a son, Jeremy, who is just finishing
his sophomore year at Amherst College.
|
