A Couple of Firsts for a Harvard Dean ... From Journalism to a College Presidency ... Vanderbilt Names a New Leader

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By EUGENE MCCORMACK, ROBIN WILSON and PAUL FAIN

CRIMSON FIRST: Harvard University, which has never had a female or African-American dean of its undergraduate Harvard College, has made a hire that is a first in both respects.

Evelynn Hammonds, the university's senior vice provost for faculty development and diversity, will start her new appointment in June.

Ms. Hammonds, 55, has been in her current role since 2005. She is largely responsible for ensuring that women and minorities are represented equally in recruitment and promotion decisions. It was a position that was created in the wake of controversial remarks by Lawrence H. Summers, a former president, who posited that the relative paucity of women in the fields of science and technology may be related to an innate lack of ability.

Since then, Ms. Hammonds says, Harvard's image as an equal-opportunity employer has improved.

"It's been made clear that the hiring of women and minorities is a priority, and we can do that without compromising the excellence of our faculty," she says.

Ms. Hammonds says that though she has enjoyed working in the provost's office, it is time to move on.

"While I've felt that this work has been very interesting and very challenging, it's really taken me away from the students, and I wanted to get back to working with undergraduate education and undergraduate life," she says.

Ms. Hammonds, who has been at the university since 2002, is also a professor of African and African-American studies and the history of science. Previously she was a faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as director of its Center for the Study of Diversity in Science, Technology, and Medicine. She received her undergraduate degrees from both Spelman College and the Georgia Institute of Technology, her master's degree in physics from MIT, and her doctorate in the history of science from Harvard.

Her chief priorities as dean, she says, will be to put into effect the college's newly approved general-education curriculum and to improve outdated student housing.

***

STOP THE PRESSES: The career trajectory of most journalists doesn't include a college presidency. But St. Norbert College has just named Thomas Kunkel, a longtime reporter and editor, as its next president.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that Mr. Kunkel has spent the past eight years in academe, as dean of the journalism college at the University of Maryland at College Park, where he is also president of American Journalism Review. He has also written or edited five books, including Enormous Prayers: A Journey Into the Priesthood (Westview Press, 1998), an ethnographic study of contemporary Roman Catholic priests.

It was that book, and Mr. Kunkel's other writing, that attracted the search committee and the Norbertine order of Catholic priests, which established the Wisconsin college. "In higher education, we usually think presidents come from being a professor, an associate dean, a dean, and a provost of an institution," says Betsy Buckley, the trustee who headed the search committee. "And yet, when you peel back the layers and look at what you really need in terms of skills, he has that scholarly mien. It's his books that put him in the field of candidates."

Ms. Buckley says Ms. Kunkel was also a hit at the college because he "loves to raise money." She says his skills as a journalist have helped him be a persistent fund raiser. "What do you need to do as journalist?" she asks. "You are always looking for a story behind the story. You're not settling for the first answer."

Mr. Kunkel, who is 52, spent his journalism career at the San Jose Mercury News, The Miami Herald, The New York Times, and The Cincinnati Post. He acknowledges that he is a "very unorthodox presidential candidate." But he attended Catholic school in Indiana and looks forward to returning to his Midwestern roots.

For the next couple of years, though, he plans on maintaining his home near the University of Maryland. Two of his daughters are undergraduates at the university, and the other two are graduate students who live at home.

***

NEWEST COMMODORE: Nicholas S. Zeppos, Vanderbilt University's chief academic officer and interim chancellor, has been hired for the permanent chancellor position, the university announced this month.

Vanderbilt conducted an extensive search to find a replacement for E. Gordon Gee, according to university officials. The governing board's unanimous choice was Mr. Zeppos, 53, a legal scholar who has worked at the university since arriving as an assistant professor in the law school in 1987.

"Nick knows Vanderbilt," said Martha R. Ingram, chairman of Vanderbilt's Board of Trust, in a written statement. "He knows our strengths, our traditions, and the challenges we face as we seek to continue the momentum that has made this university so special."