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Cope accepts UMSL
provost job; Wassenberg named interim dean
By Tom Cronin
Political Studies Professor
Pinky Wassenberg was named interim dean of the College of Public
Affairs and Administration last month, and she expects to serve
in this capacity until UIS officials appoint a permanent
successor to Glen Cope, the former dean.
Cope left UIS on Aug. 12 after
being selected last July for the position of provost at the
University of Missouri-St. Louis. As provost and vice chancellor
for academic affairs at UMSL, Cope currently directs every
aspect of the teaching and research missions at the institution,
including libraries and student affairs.
At UIS, Cope’s accomplishments
included overseeing the implementation of the campus’ first
doctorate program – the Doctor of Public Administration – in
1998. She also hired approximately 12 faculty members during her
eight-year tenure as dean.
Before coming to UIS, Cope
served for five years as the dean of the Lyndon B. Johnson
School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.
She was a member of the faculty there for 15 years.
With Cope’s departure, UIS
Provost Michael Cheney began a search for an interim dean,
asking faculty members to apply if interested or to nominate
another faculty member. Wassenberg said that a colleague
nominated her for the position, and she was offered the position
in August.
“The first couple of weeks were
really hard because I had been in England for eight days at a
conference … a couple days before the semester had started, and
that’s when the offer was made to me,” Wassenberg said. “So
literally, I accepted the offer one day and the next morning was
dean.”
Wassenberg said that she had
been assigned four classes to teach this semester, but she gave
up three of her classes – all except CAP 121, which is a
team-taught course – to other faculty members after being named
interim dean.
At this year’s Faculty-Staff
Convocation, Cheney said that Wassenberg has done some
“impressive” work in the courses she has taught for the Capital
Scholars Program, the Political Studies Program and an area of
law-related public policy. The university recognized
Wassenberg’s work last year by giving her the Pearson Award for
outstanding teaching, he said.
“Since coming to campus in 1987,
she has continued to excel and broaden her reach in teaching and
service and research,” Cheney said. “All those I asked about her
said she was the one who could quickly assume the role of dean,
and the college would be in good hands with her leadership.”
According to Wassenberg, it is
most likely that a permanent dean will be hired in the spring or
the summer, and the selected individual would probably begin
working just before the start of the fall 2005 semester.
UIS administrators have not yet
formed a search committee for a permanent dean, but Wassenberg
said that this is not unusual. The committee that selected
Margot Duley, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences,
did not begin meeting until early November of last year, said
Wassenberg, who served on the committee.
Wassenberg said that she will
not be a candidate in the search for a permanent dean, and she
plans to return to her faculty office after a successor is
appointed.
“This is really interesting, and
I’m learning a lot, but I fully intend to go back to teaching,”
she said.
Information about Cope’s career
was obtained from a press release from the Office of Campus
Relations.
Help Offered:
Karin Cotterman’s new gig in California
By Brian Mackey
Karin Cotterman does not want
you to know where she was born. “Can I just say Southern
California?” Oh, OK. “Well, I…I was born in Orange County.”
Orange County. The O.C. In
2000, Orange County voters cast nearly 150,000 more ballots for
George W. Bush than Al Gore, giving the President a 15 percent
margin of victory. The O.C. is 798 square miles of Conservative
American Values.
Karin Cotterman may be from
Orange County, but she is not of it.
 From
2001 through the end of the last academic year, Cotterman was
the Director of the Office of Student Volunteers and
Service-Learning at UIS. She worked with faculty members that
wanted to integrate service into their curricula, organized
student participation in national service organizations, and
helped plan activities like alternative spring breaks.
This summer, she moved back to
California with her husband Ted Matula, a former UIS
Communications faculty member. Matula is now teaching at the
University of San Francisco.
As luck would have it, Stanford
University was looking for a service-learning program director.
Stanford, alma mater of Chelsea Clinton and Chief Justice
William Rehnquist, is located south of San Francisco Bay, near
Palo Alto. Last year it had more than 14,400 students (less
than half of them undergraduates) and its annual tuition topped
$28,500.
Cotterman will be working in the
Haas Center for Public Service, where she says there are 20
people each doing a part of the job she did largely by herself
at UIS.
“I think it’s going to have the
advantage of me being able to focus on doing my job really
well,” said Cotterman. In Springfield, she worked with graduate
assistant Margie Holman and staff member Betty McLean, who
coordinates student volunteering at both Lincoln Land Community
College and UIS.
Next spring, Cotterman is
scheduled to teach a course in service-learning pedagogy. It
will be offered to students in education as well as those who
want to be service-learning teaching assistants. The class will
examine the definition of service-learning, learn what its best
practices are, and teach students how to build ethical community
partnerships.
Cotterman is no stranger to long
distance moves. In 1997 and 1998, she lived in Ghana, on the
west coast of sub-Saharan Africa. This summer, she returned
with a group of students through Amizade, an international
service-learning and volunteering organization. Cotterman and
the students helped with the construction of a new library by
making bricks with local masons.
While in Springfield, Cotterman
organized many peace-promotion activities. In March, Illinois
Times named her a “Warrior for Peace” because of her consistent,
organized opposition to the war in Iraq. Cotterman said she was
looking forward to being “more of an attendee than an organizer”
at those kinds of events. Not wasting any time, she was one of
a reported 50,000 people at the “Power to the Peaceful Festival”
in Golden Gate Park on September 11.
Another Illinois Times-dubbed
peace warrior was UIS senior Liz Moran, currently a writer for
this newspaper. Moran arrived on campus though the Capital
Scholars program in 2001, the same year as Cotterman. She spent
a lot of time volunteering with Cotterman, and they developed a
close, mentor-student relationship.
Moran says, “She was really able
to challenge me to ask more questions and to think bigger about
things.” It is clear that Cotterman played a significant role
in Moran’s development and worldview. “She really raised the
bar for people,” said Moran.
L. Christopher Miller, Vice
Chancellor for Student Affairs, had this to say of Cotterman:
“When we talk about commitment to civic engagement, Karin
Cotterman is in a class by herself.”
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