By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Three tenure actions at the June meeting of the Bowling Green State University Board of Trustees meeting highlighted the university’s efforts to strengthen particular academic areas.
The trustees approved granting tenure to three incoming faculty members, each in a key discipline, who have been hired by the administration.
Provost Rodney Rogers described them as “strategic hires” aimed at bolstering academic areas where the university already is strong.
MD Sarder was hired as a professor and chair of the Department of Engineering Technologies. He has been on the faculty at the University of Southern Mississippi. Rogers said he brings particular expertise in robotics and advanced manufacturing to BGSU.
Jayaraman Sivaguru has been hired as a professor in the Department of Chemistry. He comes from North Dakota State University. Rogers said he brings expertise in STEM education and photochemical science.
Timothy Davis has been hired as associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences. He has been at the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor. This will be his first full-time teaching position. Davis fits well into BGSU’s leading role in studying water quality in the Great Lakes, Rogers said.
In other action, the trustees approved the naming of the computer lab in the Kuhlin Center for BGSU alumnus Judge Allan Davis.
Shea McGrew, the vice president for University Advancement and the CEO of the BGSU Foundation, said that the judge has a long history of generosity towards his alma mater.
Judge Davis told the trustees that South Hall, as the Kuhlin Center was known before its renovation and expansion, holds a special place in his memory.
He was in a TV and radio class when news of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was announced. There was, he said, only one television in the building, upstairs in a radio studio. Class was dismissed and Davis and his classmates huddled around the screen watching Walter Cronkite deliver the tragic news.
The trustees granted president emeritus status to Carol Cartwright, who led BGSU from 2008 to 2011. Originally hired as an interim, she was later appointed as president.
She was BGSU’s first woman president, and had been the first woman president of an Ohio state university when she served at Kent State.
During her short tenure at BGSU she was instrumental in launching the university’s campus master plan, and securing the lead gifts for the Stroh Center and the Wolfe Center for the Arts.
President Mary Ellen Mazey, who succeeded her, said that Cartwright is still very active in higher education. Recently she was the chief hearing officer for the NCAA investigation into a sex scandal in the University of Louisville’s basketball program.
The trustees also approved changing the name of the College of Business Administration to the College of Business. This better reflects, Rogers said, the broader scope of offerings within the college.
