New faculty bring prestige, experience to Richmond
By LINDA EVANS
Editor, RichmondNow
Why would one of the nation's leading social psychologists leave a post he has held for decades at the top-rated liberal arts college in the country to join the faculty of the Jepson School of Leadership Studies?
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Al Goethals, currently at Williams, will join the leadership school's faculty in January.
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"I never dreamed I'd leave Williams College after 35 years, but there's nothing that compares with the excitement of what Richmond is trying to achieve," explains Al Goethals, who will join the Jepson faculty in January.
"Richmond is a very exciting and ambitious place, and I want to be part of its efforts to become one of the world's most distinguished small universities, offering, among other things, a superior undergraduate education."
Recruiting Goethals for the Jepson faculty is half of a one-two punch the University believes will give it the best concentration of social psychologists anywhere.
The other is Don Forsyth, who has spent the past 28 years developing a national reputation at Virginia Commonwealth University. As author of the best-selling textbook on group dynamics, Forsyth moves across town where he plans to explore "larger questions pertaining to groups, ethics and social change." Jepson's emphasis on an interdisciplinary approach to research and teaching parallels his interests, and the school, he says, will "provide me with the means and resources I need to achieve my most important research objectives."
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Don Forsyth, author of the leading textbook on group dynamics, is one of the two additions to the Jepson School
faculty that have created a new strenght in social psychology at the University
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Forsyth plans to continue his work on group dynamics as well as moral and ethical decision making. "I want to continue to explore issues of responsibility allocation in teams and work groups and perhaps generalize from small groups to larger groups, such as organizations," he says. He also will examine processes that determine when a group will consider an issue to be one with moral ramifications and how individuals with varying moral perspectives respond as group members who must grapple with an ethical dilemma.
Goethals already is well-known to the Jepson faculty, having spent the spring 2004 semester on campus and collaborating with many of them in writing and editing a book on a general theory of leadership. He plans to continue researching perceptions of presidential debates, when and why people root for the underdog, and how people use silence in negotiating both at work and in their personal lives.
In hiring Forsyth and Goethals, the University now has a concentration of social psychologists-including Crystal Hoyt, assistant professor of leadership studies; Scott Allison, professor of psychology; and Dafna Eylon, associate professor of management systems and psychology-that rivals any university in the country, says Jepson School Dean Ken Ruscio.
Jepson already is well-known for teaching ethics, he adds. "This gives us another signature strength."
Jepson is not the only school recruiting faculty members who bring national prestige and extensive experience to campus. The Robins School of Business and School of Arts and Sciences also have added outstanding faculty.
"In addition to hiring new assistant professors, we often have the opportunity to invite faculty who have distinguished themselves at other institutions to join Richmond at mid- and senior-level ranks and into endowed chairs," says Provost June Aprille. "This year's group of senior hires is extraordinary in the breadth of fields they represent and their many years of experience in academe."
Coming to Richmond after 15 years at the University of Utah, Steve Tallman assumed the E. Claiborne Robins Distinguished Professorship this fall.
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Steve Tallman brings expertise in international business and entrepreneurship to the University.
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Tallman "brings a wealth of experience in international business and entrepreneurship curricula," says Jorge Haddock, dean of the business school. "He is already emerging as one of our senior faculty leaders in these areas as he continues to impact academia globally."
Tallman says Richmond impressed him with its balanced approach to research and teaching. "After 17 years at large, public institutions, I was also attracted to the considerably different atmosphere of a smaller, private school."
While his research horizons are broad, he has continuing interests in "international alliance strategies and in the performance effects of international diversification strategies," he says. Recently he has been working on the role of geographical location as a driver of organizational knowledge development and transfer.
"As an outgrowth of all these interests, I am starting to develop a research program into offshore outsourcing as a strategic business decision."
Two new English department faculty members and additions to the chemistry and biology departments bring increased opportunities for students to study with leading scholars and engage in significant research.
Carol Parish studies the energies, structures and dynamics of certain molecular systems, such as HIV/AIDs drugs, anti-cancer drugs and others.
"The physical nature of the systems we study is diverse. However, the unifying theme is our methodological, molecular-based approach," says Parish, associate professor of chemistry.
She joined the Richmond faculty after teaching and conducting research for eight years at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, where she mentored four Goldwater Scholars and a Rhodes Scholar in research.
Her desire to "dovetail teaching and research in meaningful ways" caused Parish to choose a career as a chemist at a predominately undergraduate institution. "I was attracted to Richmond because of the high level of institutional support for teaching and research in the sciences and the large number of chemistry department faculty who are actively engaged in research with students," she says.
In the biology department, Malcolm Hill, newly hired associate professor, says Richmond stood out for a number of reasons. "The students are excellent, the faculty impressive and the facilities are outstanding." The University is growing in important ways, he observes, "and I wanted to be a part of and contribute to that growth."
Along with his wife, April Hill, who joined the biology department last year, Malcolm Hill researches sponges. The Hills' work recently was the subject of a New York Times article crediting them with discovering that marine sponges carry a sophisticated gene that in other animals controls the growth of eyes, brains and the central nervous system.
Returning to the city of their youths, Brian Henry and David Stevens have joined the English department as associate professors of creative writing.
Primarily a poet, Henry was attracted to Richmond's size, "which allows for more faculty-student interaction," and to the University's focus to become a top, national liberal arts college.
Author of six books of poetry and contributor of more than 300 poems to national and international journals and anthologies, Henry also has written critical articles, short fiction and reviews. He brought Verse magazine, an internationally acclaimed poetry journal, to Richmond with him and plans to involve students with it.
Stevens, who writes fiction, says he respects the commitment, "at all levels of the faculty and administration, to quality teaching as well as research." As a personal aside, he grew up in Richmond, and he says the University "figures centrally in my childhood memories. Both parents, both grandfathers, and many aunts, uncles and cousins on both sides are Richmond graduates."
Ohio State University will publish his latest book, Mexico is Missing and Other Stories, in early 2006. This month, a story, "The Joke," will appear in The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2005.
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