At the Board: December 2015
The Rutgers Board of Governors approves two endowed chairs and three new graduate degree programs
The following are news and developments from the December 15, 2015, Rutgers Board of Governors meeting:
Richard G. Lathrop Jr. Named Inaugural Holder of Johnson Family Chair
The Board of Governors named a professor of environmental monitoring and restoration ecology at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences as the first Johnson Family Chair in Water Resources and Watershed Ecology.
As chair, Richard G. Lathrop Jr. will lead an interdisciplinary program to study how human activities in upland watersheds affect downstream aquatic ecosystems and how those findings can be applied to help restore and care for water resources. Lathrop also is director of the Rutgers Ecological Preserve, which spans more than 350 acres and features several headwater streams that feed into the Raritan River and numerous public hiking and biking trails. He also directs the Grant F. Walton Center for Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis, which promotes the development and application of geospatial information science and technology to address issues in the environment, natural resources and agriculture. Read the full release.
Theodore Sider Named First Mellon Chair in Philosophy
The Rutgers Board of Governors approved Theodore Sider, a renowned scholar of metaphysics, to fill the first endowed chair in the philosophy department, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Philosophy.
Sider, who came to Rutgers in July from Cornell University, is known worldwide for his groundbreaking contributions in analytic metaphysics, the branch of philosophy that examines the fundamental nature of being, and his ability to explain complex theories and concepts in his writing and teaching. Read the full release.
Board of Governors Approves Three New Graduate Degrees
Rutgers will offer master’s degrees in business of fashion, health administration and philosophy in the computational biology and molecular biophysics field, the board voted.
Recognizing a strong demand for advanced degree programs for business professionals in the fashion field, Rutgers Business School is establishing a Master of Science in Business of Fashion degree. At the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, a Master of Health Administration degree program will be offered to prepare professionals for careers in health administration. The third new degree is a Master of Philosophy in the field of Computational Biology and Molecular Biophysics in the Graduate School-New Brunswick. The degree will be awarded to students in the existing Ph.D. in Computational Biology and Molecular Biophysics program and will not be a stand-alone program.
– Dory Devlin