Today Claremont McKenna College President Hiram Chodosh announced that he has named Peter Uvin, currently the Provost and Professor of Political Science at Amherst College, as CMC’s new Vice President of Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty.
“Peter’s extraordinary achievements, from award-winning scholarship and institutional development field work in Africa to his successful academic leadership at Tufts and Amherst, derive from powerful core values,” Chodosh observed in his announcement to the CMC community. “He is deeply committed to human dignity and mutual respect, free inquiry and engaged deliberation, and the transformational impact of the teacher-scholar on the next generation of leaders. These are the same values that will continue to sustain the singular contributions of Claremont McKenna College.”
Uvin, a native of Belgium, came to the United States 23 years ago and has been Provost at Amherst for the past two years. He previously served for six years as academic dean at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He earned a doctorate in political science at Switzerland’s Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies. His academic specialization has been in the development, conflict, and human rights areas, foremost in Rwanda and Burundi. The African Studies Association honored his Aiding Violence: The Development Enterprise in Rwanda as the most outstanding book of 1999. In 2006, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, which he used to conduct research in Burundi, one of the poorest countries in the world, on life in a post-civil war environment.
“I am very excited to start my new position. The mission and values of Claremont McKenna College are a perfect match,” said Uvin. “When I came to CMC, I found passionate, hardworking, and dynamic people everywhere—the faculty, the staff and the students. This is how it should be at a place that values both analysis and action, and it is a community I would love to contribute to.”
The Search Committee for the Dean of the Faculty was co-chaired by Trustee James McElwee and Professor Rod Camp received several hundred applications, and Peter Uvin was selected from an outstanding pool of finalists. “The committee did an outstanding job in finding a great match and leader for our dynamic academic community,” Chodosh praised.
The Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty serves as the chief academic officer of the College, working in close partnership with the president, faculty, staff, and students to advance the mission and success of the College. Uvin will be responsible for leadership of the curriculum, the College’s many research institutions and centers, sponsored research, academic planning and advising, global and off-campus study, information technology services, the registrar, institutional research, and other areas of the academic program. He will also work closely with the academic affairs committee of the Board of Trustees and with the academic deans of The Claremont Colleges and the joint Keck Science program.
About Claremont McKenna College
Founded in 1946, Claremont McKenna College (CMC) is a highly selective, independent premier liberal arts college with a unique real world mission. As a member of The Claremont Colleges, CMC’s dynamic programs and eminent teacher-scholars develop students into leaders in the private, public, and social sectors. Located on a beautiful residential campus east of Los Angeles, the College offers generous scholarship and financial aid, and rigorous, broad academic training in the social sciences, sciences, and the humanities, with a widely recognized expertise in economics, government, and public affairs. With more than 1,300 students from throughout the United States and many countries across the globe, the college achieves its distinctive mission of producing responsible leaders by providing a community ethos that is committed to collaboration, social innovation, and the free exchange of ideas, nationally recognized athletic programs, and rich opportunities for advanced research, real world experience, and internships through student-led enterprises and 11 research institutes.
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