Advisory Board Members

Dr. James Ammons is President of Florida A&M University.  Prior to his appointment, Dr. Ammons served as the ninth chief administrator of North Carolina Central University (NCCU). He has chaired accreditation teams for several universities, including   Clemson University and has recently been appointed a member of the Board of Directors for “The Conference Board,” which links corporate and academic perspectives on the economy, management and the role of business in society.  Dr. Ammons also serves on the Board of the National Association of Historically Black Colleges and Universities Title III Administrators, Inc., as a member of the Board of the American Association for Colleges of Teacher Education, and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.  He holds a Ph.D. in Government from Florida State University.

Dr. Esther Barazzone has served as the president of Chatham University since 1992.  As an active leader in the national higher education community, she has served on the Executive Committee of the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC), as Board Chair of the Public Leadership Education Network (PLEN), and the Executive Committee of the Board of the Women’s College Coalition. Dr. Barazzone is the former Chair of the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Pennsylvania (AICUP), a Board Member of the Council of Independent Colleges and Universities (CIC), a Board Member of Pennsylvania Campus Compact, and a Board Member of Pennsylvania Association of Colleges and Universities (PACU) and the Commonwealth Partnership. Her recent awards and honors include the 2001 University Medal from Fatima Jinnah Women University (Rawalpindi, Pakistan), an honorary doctorate from Seoul Women’s University (Seoul, Korea) in 2000; an honorary doctorate from Doshisha Women’s College (Kyoto, Japan) for her extensive work in international education, where she gave the 1999 Neesima Founder’s Lectures; the 1999 Susan B. Anthony Leadership Award from the Women’s Leadership Assembly; 1999 Vectors Pittsburgh Woman of the Year in Education; the 1996 YWCA Leadership Award in Education, and is listed in various Who’s Who editions, including Who’s Who in America, 54th edition, 2000. In 2001, she was recognized as a Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania by the Governor.  Dr. Barazzone holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in European Intellectual History from Columbia University, where she was a Fellow of the Faculty. Dr. Barazzone was a Charter Scholar in the first graduating class of New College, earning her B.A. in Philosophy and History. She also was a Fulbright Scholar to Spain and studied at the Wharton School of Business Administration and at Harvard University’s Institute for Educational Management.

Dr. Richard Bissell is Executive Director of the Policy and Global Affairs at the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in Washington, D.C.  Also, he serves as the Director of the Committee on Science, Engineering and Public Policy at NAS.  Prior to joining the NAS, Dr. Bissell held numerous prestigious appointments including as head of the interim secretariat of the World Commission on Dams, as chair and member of the Inspection Panel of the World Bank, and as the senior administrator of the Science and Technology Bureau of the U.S. Agency for International Development.  He holds a Ph.D. in International Economics from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Boston.

Dr. Michael Brintnall is executive director of the American Political Science Association.  He formerly directed the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration, the United States national accrediting body for the Masters degree in public administration and public policy.  Previous positions include Vice President for Aca­dem­ic Affairs at Mount Vernon College in Washington, DC, Director of the Economic Development Program Evaluation Office at the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and faculty appointments in political science at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island and Mount Vernon College, in Washington DC.  He received the Ph.D. in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1976. Research and public policy interests include urban public policy and development, nonprofit organizations and new models of public governance, and international roles of scholarly associations in civil society and development.  He is a founding member of the InterAmerican Network for Public Administration Education.

Dr. Angel Cabrera is President of Thunderbird School of Global Management.  Prior to his appointment at Thunderbird, he served as Dean of the Instituto de Empresa. He has held leadership positions with several national and international organizations including AACSB International, EFMD-EQUIS, the UN Global Compact, the Iberoamerican Academy of Management, Georgia Institute of Technology, ESSEC, the Greater Phoenix Leadership Council, and the Future Trends Forum in Madrid.  He is the Founding Chair of the WEF’s Global Agenda Council on Promoting Entrepreneurship and presently served as a senior adviser to the UN Global Compact Office on Academic Affairs playing a key role in the strategic planning porces of the Global Compact Academic Network.  He holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Georgia Institute of Technology, which he attended as a Fulbright Scholar.

Craig Calhoun has served as the president of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) since 1999. He also holds the title of University Professor of the Social Sciences at New York University and is the founding director of NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge. Under Dr. Calhoun’s leadership, the SSRC has initiated major projects on, among others, the public communication of social science knowledge, the privatization of risk, religion and the public sphere, HIV/AIDS, media reform and new communications technologies, transformations in knowledge production, and questions of how to assess and evaluate efforts to shape social change. As an individual scholar, Calhoun has written on culture and communication, technology and social change, social theory and politics, and on the social sciences themselves. His most recent books include Nations Matter: Culture, History, and the Cosmopolitan Dream (Routledge, 2007) and Cosmopolitanism and Belonging (Routledge, forthcoming 2009), and the University of Chicago Press is publishing a collection of his historical essays, entitled The Roots of Radicalism. Calhoun recently edited two noteworthy collections: Sociology in America (Chicago, 2007) and Lessons of Empire: Imperial Histories and American Power, with F. Cooper and K. Moore (New Press, 2006).

Throughout his career, Calhoun has been involved in projects bringing social science to bear on issues of public concern. These have ranged from consulting on rural education and development in North Carolina, to advising the Constitutional Commission of Eritrea, to helping develop communications infrastructure in Sudan. Most famously, he provided a detailed eyewitness account—and award-winning sociological analysis—of the student revolt in Tiananmen Square, in his most popular work to date, Neither Gods nor Emperors: Students and the Struggle for Democracy in China (California, 1994). Calhoun received his doctorate from Oxford University. He taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for 19 years, where he also served as dean of the Graduate School and director of the University Center for International Studies. He has been a visiting professor in China, Eritrea, France, Norway, and Sudan.

Dr. William Durden assumed his duties as president of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania on July 1, 1999.  Prior to Dickinson, Dr. Durden was president of the Sylvan Academy of Sylvan Learning Systems, Inc. and vice president for Academic Affairs of the Caliber Learning network, a joint distance-learning venture of Sylvan and MCI Corporation.  He also serves as a senior fellow of the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute.  He is a 1971 graduate of Dickinson and holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in German Languages and Literature from the Johns Hopkins University.  Previously Dr. Durden was for 16 years Executive Director of the Institute for the Academic Advancement of Youth (formerly the Center for Talented Youth), a division of Johns Hopkins, and a member of the university’s Department of German.  He was also senior education consultant to the U.S. Department of State and chaired its Advisory Committee on Exceptional Children and Youth.  Dr. Durden has received a number of academic awards, including the Fulbright at the University of Basle, Switzerland and the Klingenstein Fellowship at Columbia University.  He has held research grants from the American Council of Learned Societies and other organizations.  Dr. Durden is author of numerous books, articles, commentaries, and book reviews on topics ranging from literary criticism to American educational policy and practice both at the precollegiate and collegiate levels.

Dr. Linda Katehi is Chancellor of University of California, Davis (UC Davis). She holds a joint appointment with the Program of Gender and Women Studies at the University of Illinois. Prior to joining the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, she served as the John A. Edwardson Dean of Engineering, and as Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN, and as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Graduate Education in the College of Engineering, and Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.  She holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from UCLA.

Dr. Ronald D. Liebowitz is President of Middlebury College. He began his tenure at Middlebury as instructor of Geography in 1984, being promoted to full professor in 1993.  Other positions he held include appointments as Dean of the Faculty, Vice President of the College, Provost and Executive Vice President, and as acting President. Dr. Liebowitz is the recipient of numerous national fellowships from such prestigious organizations as the National Council on Soviet and East European Research, the International Research and Exchange Board (IREX), the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), the George F. Kennan Institute, and the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars. He also served as the first board chair for the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education (NITLE). Dr. Liebowitz holds a Ph.D. in Geography from Columbia University in New York.

Bette Loiselle received her Master of Science at the University of Illinois and her Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin in 1987.  After teaching graduate-level tropical biology field courses for two years in Costa Rica for the Organization for Tropical Studies, she accepted the position as Professor of Conservation Biology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.  Currently, she is Full Professor of Biology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.  From 1997-2003, Loiselle was the Director of the International Center for Tropical Ecology, a collaboration between UM-St. Louis and the Missouri Botanical Garden; she is currently on a two-year leave of absence from the Center’s Director position.   Loiselle is currently an elected member of a number of boards, including The Nature Conservancy-Missouri, the American Ornithologist Union, and the Organization for Tropical Studies and is an associate editor for the premier journal in ecology (The American Naturalist).  Loiselle was a Fulbright Scholar to Argentina in 2004.  Her research interests, in a broad sense, are in the behavioral ecology and conservation of tropical vertebrates.  Her research has focused on comparative studies of the mating systems of birds, the interactions between animals and plants, especially animals that disperse the seeds of tropical plants and contribute to forest regeneration, and the application of Geographic Information Systems technology to biodiversity conservation.  Her studies have direct relevance to the conservation of tropical rain forests.  She conducts her research in the Andes of Colombia, the Amazon of Ecuador, and the highly endangered Atlantic Forests of Brazil.  An important focus of the International Center for Tropical Ecology and Loiselle’s own personal goals is the training of future environmental leaders from developing tropical countries.

As founding President and CEO of the Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS), Dr. Michael B. McCall oversees a System that has an annual operating budget of over $670 million to operate a seamless complex System of 16 colleges with over 67 campuses. Since December, 1998, he has stewarded the merging of 28 community and technical colleges into 16 accredited comprehensive community and technical colleges serving over 100,000 students with more than 600 credit program options that result in certificates, diplomas, or associate degrees.  Under Dr. McCall’s leadership, KCTCS has become the largest provider of postsecondary education and workforce training in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, with 4,919 businesses served in 2008 via his workforce initiatives.

To meet the unmet need of pursuing higher education in an online, anywhere, anyplace, and anytime environment, KCTCS launched Dr. McCall’s virtual learning initiative entitled KCTCS Online that is completely learner-centered and will allow adults to pursue higher education 24/7, 365 days a year.  Other KCTCS accomplishments include the North American Racing Academy (first college-affiliated horse racing academy in the United States), Kentucky Coal Academy, Kentucky Fire Commission, and the Kentucky Board of Emergency Medical Services. Dr. McCall has served for over 39 years in community and technical colleges being recognized for his advanced collaborative partnerships, economic development, and innovative use of technology.  On April 17, 2009 he was the recipient of Phi Theta Kappa’s prestigious State Community College Director Award of Distinction.

Dr. Preston Pulliams took over as fifth president of Portland Community College (PCC) on May 24, 2004. He came to PCC after serving as vice-chancellor for Community Colleges for the State University of New York (SUNY) where he coordinated and directed the activities of the 30 community colleges in the SUNY system. Before joining the SUNY administration, Pulliams served as president of Orange County Community College in Middletown, New York from 1997 to 2003. From 1993 to 1997 he was president of the Highland Lakes Campus of the Oakland Community College District in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. He served as vice-president for student affairs at the Community College of Philadelphia from 1985 to 1993, and he also served as dean of student services and counselor at Muskegon Community College from 1972 to 1984. In addition to his experience in community college administration, Dr. Pulliams has taught at the graduate and undergraduate level, and for several years taught civics, psychology and geography at a junior high school in Michigan. He has done extensive research and writing on student achievement, minority student success, counseling at the community college level and on establishing effective working relationships between boards and college presidents.

Dr. Pulliams has received numerous honors, awards and recognition at the colleges where he previously served. In addition he has served on an impressive array of community organizations, board and commissions. He expects to be equally active in the PCC District in the years ahead. Dr. Pulliams is a community college graduate, earning his associates degree in Science from Muskegon Community College. He received a bachelor’s degree in Social Science from Michigan State University, and master’s degree in Counseling and Personnel from Western Michigan University and an Ed.D. in Educational Administration from the University of Michigan.

Dr. Anand A. Yang is Golub Chair of International Studies and Director of the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies.  Prior to joining the University of Washington in 2002, Yang taught at the University of Utah and Sweet Briar College.  At Utah he was chair of the History Department for five years and, subsequently, Director of its Asian Studies Program for six years.  Yang is the former editor of The Journal of Asian Studies and Peasant Studies, and has been and is a member of the editorial boards of several journals in Asian Studies and in History.  He is actively engaged in world history projects at the collegiate and precollegiate levels that are aimed at enhancing our historical understanding of our contemporary world.  A member of the Board of Directors of the American Council of Learned Societies and of the Executive Committee of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs, he is also active in local community organizations, including the World Affairs Council of Seattle/Tacoma.  In 2006 he will begin his term as the President of the Association for Asian Studies.