Professor Glenn Mroz has been named interim dean of the Michigan Tech School of Forestry and Wood Products, effective March 10.
Mroz, who was associate dean of the School, replaces Dean Ed Frayer, who resigned as dean on March 9.
"Ed served as dean for sixteen years and did some marvelous things while he was here," Mroz said. "He hired good people and then he cleared the way for them to do what they did best."
Under Frayer's leadership, research activity in the School expanded exponentially to a position of prominence at Michigan Tech. Enrollment in undergraduate programs doubled, while graduate enrollment tripled and a PhD program was instituted. He worked closely with Advancement and President Curt Tompkins to raise $2.5 million in private funds to help construct the new, $10-million addition to the forestry building.
Mroz joined the School of Forestry and Wood Products faculty in 1976 as an assistant professor. Before his appointment as associate dean, he was coordinator of the School's Forest Ecology and Management Program.
Mroz has been an investigator on approximately $6.5 million in sponsored research. Among his more well-known projects was the ELF environmental monitoring program, which evaluated the effects on nearby vegetation of extremely low frequency radio waves generated by the US Navy's communications grid. Recently, he was a co-investigator on the Gribben buried-forest project, studying a 10,000-year-old forest buried in sand and water at the end of the last ice age. He has authored or coauthored approximately seventy-five publications.
Mroz has served on the University Senate and chairs Michigan Tech's Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. He has been involved in a variety of international service projects in Poland and the Baltic states and is a consultant for both private industry and public agencies, including the US Forest Service.
He earned a BS in Forest Management and an MS in Forest Soils from Michigan Tech and a PhD in Silviculture from North Carolina State University.
"Glenn is well established as a leader in the School and has been very effective in his role as associate dean, so the transition should be pretty seamless," Interim Provost Stephen Bowen said. "We expect that the School will continue to prosper as we conduct a search for a new dean."
Mroz's appointment as interim dean is effective though July 31, 2001. After a new provost is named, a search committee will be formed to fill the position permanently.
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