Carolina Looks Inside for Executive Associate Provost

Posted on Aug. 25, 2008

Ronald Strauss, a member of the dental school faculty for 34 years, will be the new executive associate provost.

Strauss, whose research has delved into how health problems affect society – including dental health and HIV/AIDS – has worked in the dental ecology department, the medical school’s social medicine department and the epidemiology department in the School of Public Health.

He will move to South Building as of Sept. 1 as a top aide to Provost Bernadette Gray-Little, where he also will work with deans to advance UNC academics.

Strauss succeeds Steve Allred ’74, who became provost at the University of Richmond on July 1. Officials said the search for Allred’s successor was kept within the University to ensure a high level of institutional knowledge.

Strauss earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from Queens College, his doctorate in dentistry from the University of Pennsylvania, and a subsequent master’s and doctorate in sociology, also from Pennsylvania.

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Related coverage is available online:

• The Need to Be There: On Ron Strauss’ desk is a red binder labeled “Proposal for a School of Dentistry in Malawi.” … UNC’s work in Malawi is not missionary but research in deadly infectious disease. It has built a two-way street that helps sick people, enables health workers to serve their country better and opens new paths for students back home.
  From the January/February 2005 issue of the Carolina Alumni Review, available online to Carolina Alumni members.
• One Thousand Smiles: Dr. Ron Strauss likes to see people smile. As a professor and chair of UNC’s department of dental ecology, Strauss has spent more than two decades practicing dentistry-his passion is treating children with craniofacial birth defects-and teaching thousands of dentistry and medical students how to care for others.
  From the March/April 1998 “Carolina Mosaic” special report feature in the Carolina Alumni Review, available online to Carolina Alumni members.

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