By Carri P. Jenkins
BYU President Merrill J. Bateman has announced five key appointments in his administrative organization, including the naming of Janet S. Scharman, associate director of the Counseling and Development Center, as assistant vice president of Student Life and dean of students.
Ned C. Hill, chair of the Department of Business Management, has been appointed assistant to the president for Planning and Budgeting.
L. Robert Webb, an associate academic vice president, is the new director of planning in the Office of Planning and Budgeting. He will report to Hill.
Cheryl Brown, associate dean of the College of Humanities, will replace Webb as an associate academic vice president for continuing education and academic support. Gary R. Hooper, executive director of the Office of Research and Creative Activities, has been named associate academic vice president for research and graduate studies. Brown and Harper will report to academic vice president Alan L. Wilkins.
With Provost Bruce C. Hafen’s call as an LDS General Authority in April (see related article: Bruce C. Hafen: The Mind, The Spirit, The Soul), President Bateman made the decision to reassign the provost’s duties. The creation of the Office of Planning and Budgeting is part of this reordering process.
“This new office, which will be led by Ned Hill and Robert Webb, grows out of the university’s strategic planning efforts over the past several years,” said President Bateman. “It will allow the university to look at how our various resources are allocated on campus and to evaluate the needs of each of our different entities.”
As dean of students, Scharman will report to Student Life vice president Alton L. Wade. She replaces Maren M. Mouritsen, who served as dean for 10 years and is returning to a faculty appointment and other assignments.
A licensed psychologist, Scharman earned her doctoral degree from the University of Utah in counseling psychology. She has been involved the past several years in overseeing the day-to-day operation of services of the counseling center, including the Women’s Services and Resources Office, Multicultural Personal Counseling, and Services for Students with Disabilities. She recently served as chair of the Institutional Action Committee on Women’s Advisement and as co-chair of the Educational Psychology/CDC Collaboration Committee.
Hill is the Joel C. Peterson Professor of Business Administration in the Marriott School of Management. He received a doctoral degree from Cornell University in finance and a master of science from Cornell in bio-organic chemistry.
Internationally known for his work with electronic data interchange, Hill is the author of more than 70 professional publications and three books. As chair of the Graduate Curriculum Committee, he was responsible for the major redesign of the BYU MBA program. He is the recipient of four BYU MBA Teaching Excellence Awards and the Outstanding Faculty Award.
Webb, who obtained his master’s degree in public administration, has served four presidents at BYU. In those years, he has served as an associate and assistant academic vice president, administrative assistant to the academic vice president, director of Financial Aid, and director of School Relations.
A distinguished teacher, Brown has an international reputation in teaching English as a second language. She earned her doctoral degree in applied linguistics with an emphasis in language acquisition from the University of California at Los Angeles.
Brown received the Karl G. Maeser Distinguished Teaching Award in 1986 and has twice been the Linguistics Department’s outstanding teacher. She has been the recipient of the BYU James L. Barker Lectureship in Language and Linguistics and two years ago was named the Blue Key College of Humanities Professor of the Year. In addition, she was awarded a Fulbright Lectureship at two universities in Chile in 1992.
Hooper replaces J. Bevan Ott, who is returning to teaching and research in the Chemistry Department. Hooper is a professor of botany and has written two books and more than 60 refereed publications, primarily in plant biology and electron microscopy. As the executive director of the Office of Research and Creative Activities, Hooper initiated a program to provide undergraduate scholarships for research and creative activity. This program, which included more than 400 students last year, involves faculty mentors.
Before coming to BYU in 1992, Hooper was the vice provost for research and dean of the graduate school at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech). While there, he also served as the founding director of the Agricultural Biotechnology Center, head of the Department of Plant Pathology and Physiology, and president of Virginia Tech Intellectual Properties Inc. He earned his doctorate at the University of California, Riverside and his bachelor’s degree at BYU.