Several interim leaders were named this past week to fill positions that will become vacant due to upcoming retirements and outside job opportunities. Those people include:
• Michael Griswold, director and professor, School of Molecular Biosciences, has accepted the position of interim dean for the College of Sciences. He begins his new position Aug. 1.
Griswold joined the faculty at WSU in 1976. He has served in several administrative roles, including chair of the program in biochemistry/biophysics 1986 – 89 and 1990 – 94, acting dean of Sciences 1989 – 90 and director of the School of Molecular Biosciences since 1999.
Griswold is recognized as one of the leading authorities in the study of male reproductive biology, specifically the role of the Sertoli cell in sperm cell development. He has received a MERIT award from the National Institutes of Health and has served as president of the Society for the Study of Reproduction. He gave the keynote address at the 1999 Gordon Research Conference. He also won WSU’s Sahlin Faculty Excellence Award for Research, Scholarship and Arts 1998 – 99.
Griswold earned his doctorate in biochemistry from the University of Wyoming in 1969.
• James Petersen, professor of chemical engineering and associate dean for research and graduate programs in Washington State University’s College of Engineering and Architecture, has accepted the position of interim vice provost for research. He begins his new position July 1.
He came to WSU in 1979 and was appointed director of the WSU/NSF IGERT Center for Multiphase Environmental Research in 1996. He has been serving as associate dean for research and graduate programs since Aug. 2000.
Petersen also served as the interim executive director of the Inland Northwest Research Alliance, a consortium of regional universities established to address environmental research and other scientific issues in cooperation with the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory from Dec. 1999 – June 2001.
One of WSU’s leading researchers, Petersen’s work has focused on developing bioremediation models to control environmental contamination. The National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Washington Technology Center and other federal agencies have funded his research.
Petersen earned his doctorate in chemical engineering from Iowa State University in 1979.
• James A. Kropf has been appointed interim director of WSU’s Puyallup Research and Extension Center.
James Zuiches, dean of the College of Agriculture and Home Economics, said Kropf will serve while the college conducts a national search for a new director. Dean Glawe recently resigned after serving as director for more than five years. He will continue at the center as a mycologist.
Kropf began his new assignment April 1. He will continue as Northwest District Director for WSU Cooperative Extension.
• Janet Vaughn Danley, associate director of admissions, has been named the interim executive director for enrollment services, to take effect when Jim Rimpau leaves that position in May. Danley took her current position a little over one year ago.
Danley worked in academic affairs at Northern Montana College in Havre, Mont. from 1986 to 1991, both as assistant to the vice president and as the assistant vice president. She was the registrar at the University of Arkansas Monticello from 1991 – 95 and the registrar/director of institutional research at Lewis-Clark State College, Lewiston, Idaho, 1995 – 01.
She has a bachelor of technology degree from Northern Montana College, master of public administration from the University of Montana, and a doctor of education from the University of Arkansas Little Rock.
