RULE NAMED INTERIM DEAN OF COLLEGE OF SCIENCES

Joseph H. Rule of Virginia Beach, associate dean of the College of Sciences at Old Dominion University, has been named interim dean of the college. He succeeds Thomas Isenhour, who recently was named provost and vice president for academic affairs at the university.

A native of Knoxville, Tenn., Rule received his doctoral degree from the University of Missouri in 1972 and his master's and bachelor's from the University of Tennessee in 1970 and 1967, respectively. He has been associate dean since 1995 and a professor in the Department of Ocean, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences since 1998.

Rule has held various academic appointments at Old Dominion, where he first arrived as an assistant professor of geophysical sciences in 1976. In 1991, he was named a Fulbright scholar, lecturing in environmental sciences at Marie Curie Sklodowska University in Lublin, Poland.

Rule is a member of the American Society of Agronomy and the Soil Science Society of America, as well as the Geological Society of America and the Water Environment Federation.

Author or co-author of many articles and reviewer of other articles in his discipline, Rule published a book, "Topics in Environmental Sciences," a compilation of his notes from his Fulbright lectures in 1994. He also wrote a chapter on trace metal adsorption in soils in 1998 in a book titled "Adsorption and its Application in Industry and Environmental Protection, Vol. II."

At Old Dominion, Rule has been graduate program director of the Department of Geophysical Sciences; assistant chair and chairman of the Department of Geological Sciences. Recently, he has served as a member of the University Advisory Committee on Technology and was chair of the E-Learning subcommittee.

He has assisted with preparation of the College of Science's Strategic Plan and led preparation of a tour of the college for President Roseann Runte.