PULLMAN – Three finalists for the position of dean of the WSU College of Science will be separately visiting the Pullman campus in August.
The three candidates are Ellen Fisher, professor and department chair of Chemistry at Colorado State University; Daryll DeWald, professor and department head of Biology at Utah State University; and Peter Dorhout vice provost for Graduate Affairs, assistant vice president for Research and professor of Chemistry at Colorado State University.
Numerous open sessions and interviews are slated with the candidates. All faculty and staff are invited to attend the open sessions, which will be announced through WSU Announcements.
Fisher will visit WSU’s Pullman campus on August 19 and 20. She was named to the position of chair of the CSU Department of Chemistry in July 2009, after serving for three years as associate chair. Fisher also serves as an associate editor for the American Chemical Society journal, “ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces.” She joined the Colorado State chemistry department in 1993 and has been involved in a variety of activities including the National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates program. Fisher received her doctoral degree from the University of Utah in 1991 and her bachelor’s degree from Texas Lutheran University in 1986.
She is an analytical, materials and physical chemist whose work focuses on understanding the fundamental chemical processes that take place during plasma processing and chemical vapor deposition. Fisher also works to improve solar cell efficiency, develop composite nanomaterials and explore environmental applications for plasma chemistry. Her group has been a world leader in contributing new understanding of chemical mechanisms for scientific and industrial plasma systems. Their work has been instrumental in making direct correlations between gas-phase plasma species and resulting materials chemistry – essentially connecting the fundamental science “dots” with the desired real-world applications.
Fisher’s work has resulted in three patents and patent disclosures, more than 120 peer-reviewed journal articles and 80 invited talks. She is a fellow of the American Vacuum Society, a member of the American Chemical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Materials Research Society.
DeWald, who will visit WSU in Pullman on August 23 and 24, joined the Utah State faculty in 1995 and has served as department head of Biology since 2006. Prior to that appointment, he was the associate director for the Center for Integrated Biosystems (2002-06), director of the Multicultural Student Research Program (2001-07), co-director of the Multicultural Scholars Program (2003-07), and director of the Microscopy Facility (1998-06). He received his bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from the University of Wyoming and his doctorate in Biochemistry from Texas A&M University.
As a biochemist, DeWald has active research programs or projects in plant functional genomics, plant cell signaling, and mammalian cell signaling. His work has explored the role of lipids that control cellular communication during plant stress acclimation and cellular protein trafficking, and how lipids regulate cancer cell metastasis. DeWald has co-authored more than 40 peer-reviewed publications and has managed over $3,000,000 in research funding. During the last decade he has been advisor to more than ten graduate students and 40 undergraduate research students. His instructional emphases have been coursework in cell biology, advanced cell biology and plant physiology.
Dorhout will visit Pullman on August 26 and 27. He joined CSU as an assistant professor of chemistry in 1991 and was promoted to full professor in 2002. He served as associate dean for research and graduate education for the College of Natural Sciences and as director of the materials chemistry program from 2002 until moving on to the provost’s office in 2004 to serve as vice provost for Graduate Affairs. He earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of Illinois-Urbana, Champaign and a doctorate in inorganic chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
A recognized expert in solid state and materials chemistry and environmental chemistry, Dorhout is a member of the Board of Directors for the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, a philanthropic foundation supporting advances in science in chemistry, physics, and astronomy, and a member of the Board of Directors of the American Chemical Society. He served formerly on the National Graduate Curriculum Committee for the Homeland Security/Defense Education Consortium. He has had active research programs in solid state f-element chemistry and nanomaterials science, and his current research interests include actinide and rare-earth metal solid state chemistry and nuclear non-proliferation.
Sue B. Clark, professor and chair of the Chemistry Department in the College of Sciences has served as interim dean of the College of Sciences since earlier this month. A leading researcher in her field, Clark’s current work focuses on the environmental chemistry of plutonium and other actinides, and development of radioanalytical methods to measure actinide elements in environmental samples. Her research efforts are supported by grants from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the National Nuclear Security Administration, and the Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology. Professor Clark is involved in numerous national and international service activities. Former College of Science Dean Mike Griswold returned to the faculty in June after serving as Dean of the College of Sciences for seven years.