Associate Provost for Curriculum and Instruction Amy Wohlert has been appointed interim dean of Graduate Studies for the 2005-06 academic year. She will add the position to her current duties, which will focus more closely on curriculum. Associate Provost Wynn M. Goering will take on some of Wohlert’s duties regarding undergraduate instruction.
Acting Provost Reed Dasenbrock says, “This looks like a good moment to take a careful look at graduate education at UNM and to consider if our current administrative structure is the right one.”
Dasenbrock is forming a task force to look at the structure of graduate education on campus. The task force will be charged with asking whether the Office of Graduate Studies has the right set of responsibilities and powers, whether those responsibilities should be increased or decreased, and whether it should be staffed in a different way. The task force will also be asked to look at the changes new software now being introduced at UNM will bring to handling graduate students, and to make suggestions if needed.
Buckner Creel, president of the Graduate and Professional Student Association will co-chair the task force along with a senior member of the faculty. That person has not yet been named. Dasenbrock says there will be representatives from key groups on campus appointed to the task force.
“I am confident that Interim Dean Wohlert will provide the Office of Graduate Studies with strong leadership over the next year, and I look forward to seeing what the task force recommends for the future,” says Dasenbrock. “Graduate education is a very important part of our mission, and we need to do everything we can to make sure that our graduate programs are as strong as we can make them.”
Wohlert says, “I look forward to working with the staff at the Office of Graduate Studies to serve our graduate students and programs. Supporting graduate education at UNM is an exciting task.”
Contact: Karen Wentworth, (505) 277-5627