New Deans Named

Thu., Jul 15

President Stanley F. Battle has announced the appointment of three new deans for the schools of Business, Education and Graduate Studies.

"All of the chosen candidates are innovative, forward-thinking individuals whose skills in their respective disciplines will add to the rich tapestry of knowledge and expertise already present on our campus," Battle said. Short profiles of the new hires appear below. More extensive interviews will be published in forthcoming editions of Southern Life.

Ellen Durnin, dean of the School of Business, comes to Southern from Western Connecticut State University, where she is currently dean of Graduate Studies and External Programs. In this capacity, she co-chaired the university's strategic planning and implementation process and led enrollment management planning at the graduate level. She also played an integral role in developing a range of graduate-level programming, including Western's Ed.D. in instructional leadership and the proposed collaborative Ed.D. in nursing with Southern. In earlier roles with Western, she served as dean of the first CSUS extension campus at Waterbury and managed the university's first overseas graduate program at the College of the Bahamas. Durnin also chaired Western's Department of Management in the business school, following a seven-year term as an assistant professor in Southern's Management Department.

The dean of the School of Education, Michael Sampson, was most recently coordinator of Reading Education and chairman of the Graduate Council at the University of South Florida. Previously, he served at Texas A&M University as doctoral programs director, overseeing an Ed.D. in curriculum and instruction and a Ph.D. in reading. He also headed the institution's Department of Elementary Education, providing leadership for its 15 degree programs, including three doctoral, eight master's and four undergraduate. Sampson was executive director of the International Institute of Literacy Learning for 20 years, developing partnerships with more than 30 public and private school districts across the United States and abroad. A former state president of the Texas Association for the Improvement of Reading, he is also a widely published author of books for young readers.

Holly Crawford, new dean of the School of Graduate Studies, developed and oversaw the Office of Research at Rutgers University. As associate dean for research, she led an office responsible for all external competitive grant activities - a $40 million portfolio - for the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences and several affiliated programs. Crawford also has been an associate research professor in the Department of Agriculture, Food and Resource Economics and an associate director of the Center for Computational Biomedicine Imaging and Modeling at Rutgers. Her academic experience includes an associate deanship at the Rutgers School of Engineering, and assistant professorships in the institution's Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the School of Communication, Information and Library Studies. An alumna of Southern, Crawford earned both bachelor's and master's degrees in English at the university.