HICKEY STEPPING DOWN TO TAKE PROVOST JOB AT UNIVERSITY OF AKRON

Terry L. Hickey recently announced that he will step down from his post as dean of the College of Sciences to become senior vice president and provost at the University of Akron.

Hickey, who assumes his new duties at the end of April, will be second in command to the university's president and in charge of all academic programs on and off campus. Akron, with an enrollment of 24,000, is located in northeastern Ohio, southeast of Cleveland.

Hickey has been at Old Dominion since the summer of 1997, when he arrived from the University of Alabama-Birmingham. As he looks forward to new challenges at Akron, Hickey said he is leaving at a time when the College of Sciences' departments are working together as never before and funding and enrollments are higher than ever.

"The college is a much more interdisciplinary and collaborative environment than when I arrived," Hickey said. "We've got faculty interacting across departments and colleges. That's a positive thing."

Hickey pointed to the creation of biogeochemistry and computational sciences programs, both marriages of separate disciplines within the college, as successes during his term. He added that the college is at an all-time high for external funding ($10.6 million), while enrollments and credits earned are at their highest levels ever.

"It's an extremely healthy college at this point in time," he said. "I think the college is clearly headed toward building research strengths in many areas."