Open Forums for Vice President for Research / Dean of Graduate School Candidates

Dr. Kennneth I. Burns, Chair

Faculty, staff and students are invited to attend and participate in open forums presenting the four candidates for the position of Vice President for Research/Dean of the Graduate School. Each candidate will be available for questioning during a 90-minute open forum in the Admissions Presentation Room, 201A Criser Hall, from 3:30 to 5 p.m.

The four candidates, brief descriptions and times of the open forums follows:

Thomas Collins — Thursday, Feb. 4. (Not Feb. 5 as previously reported).
Thomas (Tom) Collins is vice president for research at Oklahoma State University, which includes oversight of the university’s Graduate College. Collins earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physics from the University of Georgia before coming to the University of Florida for his physics doctorate, which he earned in 1964. He was a physicist, group leader and staff scientist with the U.S. Air Force before becoming associate vice president for academic affairs-research at the University of Missouri from 1979-85. He then went to the University of Tennessee as associate vice chancellor for research until assuming his post at Oklahoma State in 1991.

Jay Moskowitz — Tuesday, Feb. 9.
Jay Moskowitz is senior associate dean at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine, the most senior person at the school, responsible for development and administration of biomedical and bioengineering research. Moskowitz earned his bachelor’s at Queen’s College and his doctorate in biomedical sciences from Brown University. He has held an array of position with the National Institutes of Health, rising to principal deputy director and deputy director for science policy and technology transfer. He then spent two years at the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, as director of the Division of Intramural Research and deputy director before moving to Wake Forest in 1995.

Marsha Torr — Thursday, Feb. 18
Marsha Torr is vice provost for research at the University of South Carolina and executive director of the South Carolina Research Institute. Torr has two bachelor’s, a master’s and a doctorate degree from Rhodes University in South Africa. She was a researcher at the University of Michigan from 1974-79 before joining the faculty at Utah State University. She left academia in 1985 for 10 years to work at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, eventually becoming chief scientist in the payload projects office.

Winfred Phillips — Tuesday, Feb 23
Winfred Phillips is associate vice president and dean of UF’s College of Engineering. Phillips earned his graduate degrees at the University of Virginia before beginning his teaching and administrative career at the Pennsylvania State University, eventually rising to the position of acting chairman for the Intercollege Bioengineering Program and then associate dean for research. In 1980, he was named head of the Purdue University School of Mechanical Engineering, where he served for eight years before being hired as dean of engineering at UF. He also heads the Engineering and Industrial Experiment Station, created by the Florida Legislature in 1941 as a division of the UF College of Engineering to organize and promote research projects in engineering and related sciences, with special emphasis on problems important to the development of industry in Florida.