New UW-River Falls provost, CBE dean set to take office July 1

After searching for a formal provost and dean of the College of Business and Economics since last fall, UW-River Falls filled both of these key positions last week. The new provost will be Fernando Delgado of Hamline University, and the CBE’s current Associate Dean Glenn Potts was appointed as new dean. Both of them will take office on July 1.

Delgado is currently in his third year as the dean of Hamline University’s College of Liberal Arts. He handles intercollegiate sports, undergraduate admissions and Hamline’s career development and academic services centers. He has also worked at Minnesota State University-Mankato as dean of their College of Graduate Studies, and at Arizona State University as associate vice provost of academic programs.

Delgado has a Master of Arts and Ph.D. in communications studies from the University of Iowa, as well as a Bachelor of Arts in political science from San Jose’ State University. He has written 18 articles in refereed journals and two manuscripts which he is preparing to publish: “Fidel Castro and the Construction of a Revolutionary Ideology” and “Kicking Around: Soccer America and the Persistence of a Soccer Culture.” Delgado visited UWRF on March 4.

His broad academic experience and communication skills made him an excellent choice for provost, chair of the provost search-and-screen committee Marshall Toman said.

“I thought he was open and extremely intelligent, and very personable.” Toman said.

He added that the administration’s choice of Delgado was consistent with the committee’s deliberations, which were forwarded to Interim Chancellor Connie Foster, working with Chancellor-Elect Dean Van Galen, on March 9. Delgado lives with his wife and two children in Cottage Grove, Minn., Toman said.

The provost is the main academic official on campus, overseeing the internal affairs of all curricular and teaching issues. The deans of UWRF’s four separate colleges also report directly to this person, who then reports to the chancellor. Delgado was chosen as one of two finalists for the position. The other was UW-La Crosse’s Karen Palmer McLean, currently the dean of their College of Arts and Sciences and an expert in adult fitness and exercise.

New College of Business and Economics Dean Glenn Potts has been with UWRF since 1976. He started as an assistant economics professor, winning a Distinguished Teacher Award in 1982. Less than 20 years later he became director of the CBE grad program, and then associate dean of the college last year. Potts said he is planning to take the CBE to new heights as dean.

“I’m looking forward to helping the faculty and staff make the program even betterÉ[and] working with the business community and the alumni,” Potts said.

The other two finalists for dean were Tim Longfellow, the marketing chair at Illinois State University, and Jeff Katz, associate dean of the College of Business Administration at Kansas State University.

Potts was a good choice because of his administrative experience, chair of the dean search-and-screen committee Darryl Miller said.

“He’s got a lot of strengths as a professional, years of service and dedication to UWRF,” Miller said. “He was instrumental in building the CBE.”

Potts was also a key figure in the CBE’s mission to be accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International (AACSB), a prestigious international agency. Without him, Miller said, the college would not have succeeded.

The dean committee worked much like the provost committee, advertising the positions, collecting a pool of applicants and narrowing them down to a list of finalists. However, the dean committee reported to Interim Provost Terry Brown rather than directly to Foster. They evaluated the three candidates in their latest closed-session meetings, settling on one and then recommending him to Brown three weeks ago.

The University’s last formal provost and CBE dean were Charlie Hurt and Barbara Nemecek, respectively. Both of them resigned and returned to teaching in 2007 and 2008. Connie Foster and Terry Brown have both served as interim provosts. Brown took the position when Foster was chosen as interim chancellor, after the departure of Don Betz last year. Meanwhile, Brian Schultz has been the interim dean of the CBE.

Changes like these have been fairly common in recent years, with a number of people moving on or retiring from administrative and teaching positions and other employees stepping into these positions on an interim basis. UWRF is in a period of great transition, Interim Chancellor Foster said, but should soon regain its former consistency.

ÒI think we will be seeing greater stability in administrative positions over the new few years.Ó Foster said a week before the new appointments.