Jeffrey Runner will coordinate undergraduate education, Julie Myers has been named CIO, and San Cannon has a new role as vice provost for data governance.
Plus, Rick Waugh announces he’s stepping down as vice provost for research.
A key area of the University of Rochester’s mission—undergraduate education—along with the critical functions of information technology and data governance are getting organizational enhancements and new leaders going into the 2021–22 academic year.
Provost Rob Clark has announced several important updates to central leadership roles, including:
- Jeffrey Runner, currently the dean of the College, will also become the University’s new vice provost and dean for undergraduate education;
- Julie Myers, deputy chief information technology officer, has been named vice president and chief information officer (CIO);
- Sandra (San) Cannon, the University’s chief data officer, has been promoted to vice provost for data governance, reporting to the provost;
- Sandhya Dwarkadas, the Albert Arendt Hopeman Professor of Engineering, has been named interim associate vice president for research.
Clark said the appointments are intended to strengthen a University-wide perspective on essential areas of institutional responsibility. The appointees will be members of the University cabinet when they begin their new roles on July 1.
“One of the lessons of the past 15 months is that when the University works in a comprehensive and coordinated fashion, we’re better positioned to serve our students, support our researchers and faculty members, and make strides toward our strategic goals,” Clark said. “In many ways, San’s position as the institution’s chief data officer has been a model for that kind of comprehensive vision, but one of my goals as provost has been to identify some of the essential functions of the University that would be better served through coordination across academic and administrative units.”
As vice provost, Runner will coordinate undergraduate education and student life broadly across the University, including in Arts, Sciences & Engineering and at the Eastman School of Music. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Runner served in a similar capacity, helping to coordinate across units as the University adjusted academic and student life operations. Runner will continue his role as dean of the College in addition to serving in his new position. As dean, Runner has been reappointed to a second five-year appointment.
A linguist, Runner has been a member of the faculty since 1994 and holds appointments in both the Department of Linguistics and the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. In 2006, he received a Goergen Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. He earned a PhD in linguistics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
As CIO, Myers will be responsible for ensuring that information technology services align with the institution’s missions of teaching, research, patient care, performance, and community service. That includes building collaborative relationships across the University to support efficient and cost-effective distribution of information throughout the University community.
Myers joined the University in 2006, after two decades in leadership positions in information technology at Eastman Kodak Company and Xerox Corporation. At Rochester, she has led IT teams responsible for Advancement, Information Security, and Enterprise Applications, and she most recently served as the deputy CIO. She earned an executive MBA from the Simon Business School. She succeeds Dave Lewis, who is stepping down as CIO at the end of June.
As vice provost and chief data officer, Cannon will lead efforts to improve the University’s data management processes in ways that support the efficiency and effectiveness of the institution’s operations and for strategic planning.
She became the University’s first chief data officer in 2018, when she was named associate vice provost. Before joining the University, she served as assistant vice president and economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Cannon earned her PhD in economics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
As interim associate vice president for research, Dwarkadas will succeed Richard (Rick) Waugh, who has served in research leadership roles since 2013.
Dwarkadas joined the faculty in the Department of Computer Science in 1996 and served as chair of the department from 2014 to 2020. She also holds a secondary appointment in electrical and computer engineering. She received the 2020 Edmund A. Hajim Outstanding Faculty Award. Dwarkadas earned her PhD from Rice University.
The new appointments are part of other forthcoming changes to structures and positions at the cabinet level.
In April, President Sarah Mangelsdorf announced that Sarah Peyre, currently dean of the Warner School of Education, will serve for six months as interim provost, beginning July 1, when Clark steps down from that role and from his role as senior vice president for research.
Mangelsdorf also named Stephen Dewhurst, currently vice dean for research at the School of Medicine and Dentistry and associate vice president for health sciences research for the University, to a one-year appointment as interim vice president for research. Dwarkadas will report to Dewhurst in her interim role.
Waugh announced earlier this year that he planned to step down from his role in the provost’s office to return to his own research projects as a faculty member in the Department of Biomedical Engineering.
Clark said Waugh has been instrumental in helping build a community of University researchers, establishing new ways for faculty to collaborate on projects and to build connections with national, state, and commercial research opportunities.
“Thanks to Rick’s leadership, institutional knowledge, and ability to build bridges across disciplines, our research enterprise has made great strides over the past decade,” Clark said. “He’s a true faculty scholar who always made sure that his colleagues at the University could do their best work.”
With four decades of experience as an academic leader at Rochester, Waugh was the founding chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering. In 2017, he served as interim dean of Arts, Sciences & Engineering, before the appointment of Donald Hall as the Robert L. and Mary Sproull Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Sciences & Engineering.
- Learn more about the search for the University’s provost.
