Three Candidates for Provost to Give Public Lectures

Posted on Jan. 15, 2010

The University has narrowed the search for its next provost to three candidates who will visit Chapel Hill beginning this month and will give public lectures.

A fourth candidate who had been scheduled to be on campus this week has withdrawn from consideration.

In a letter to the campus community, Chancellor Holden Thorp ’86 said the candidates would answer questions at the lectures about themselves and their views regarding the future of public universities.

The position, which is the University’s top academic officer, also carries the title of executive vice chancellor. One of the three is expected to succeed Bernadette Gray-Little, who left UNC last year to become chancellor at the University of Kansas.

The candidates and the dates, times and locations of their public lectures are:

• Anthony P. Monaco, pro-vice-chancellor for planning and resources at the University of Oxford since 2007. At Oxford, Monaco is professor of human genetics and head of the Neurodevelopmental and Neurological Disorders Group at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics. He directed the center for nine years, and he served from 1995 to 1998 as a fellow and founding member. He has been a University Research lecturer at Oxford. He previously served as senior scientist and head of the Human Genetics Laboratory, Imperial Cancer Research Fund, Institute of Molecular Medicine, John Radcliffe Hospital, at Oxford. He received a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University in 1982 and both a doctorate (1987) and medical degree (1988) from Harvard University. Monaco will speak at 3 p.m. Jan. 28 in Toy Lounge, Dey Hall.
• Scott L. Zeger, vice provost for research at The Johns Hopkins University since 2008. He is Hurley-Dorrier Professor of biostatistics at Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health. He served as the university’s interim provost from March to August 2009, and for 12 years he chaired the department of biostatistics at Hopkins’ school of public health. At Hopkins since 1982, Zeger holds a joint appointment in the department of epidemiology and the School of Hygiene and Public Health. From 1974 to 1978, he was a biomathematician at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. He received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1974; a master’s from Drexel University in 1978; and a doctorate from Princeton in 1982. Zeger will give a public presentation at 3 p.m. Feb. 1 in the Pleasants Assembly Room, Wilson Library.
• Jeffrey S. Vitter, professor of computer science and engineering at Texas A&M University since 2008. Vitter served as provost and executive vice president for academics there in 2008-09. From 2002 to 2008, he was Frederick L. Hovde Dean in the College of Science and professor of computer science at Purdue University. Previously, he was founding member and co-director of the Center for Geometric and Biological Computing at Duke University, where he held an appointment as Gilbert, Louis and Edward Lehrman Professor and chair of the department of computer science. Prior to that, he was a faculty member in computer science at Brown University. He received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame in 1977, a doctorate from Stanford in 1980 and an MBA from Duke in 2002. Vitter will speak at 3 p.m. Feb. 4 in Toy Lounge, Dey Hall.

The fourth candidate who withdrew from consideration was Philip J. Hanlon, vice provost for academic and budgetary affairs at the University of Michigan.

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More online…

• Gray-Little Leaving for Kansas
  News report from June 2009
• Individual bios of candidates

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