New Vice Provost Positions for Rutgers–New Brunswick

June 22, 2022

Dear Rutgers University­–New Brunswick Community,

I am pleased to announce that Vice Provost for Academic Affairs Saundra Tomlinson-Clarke will take on the new role of Senior Vice Provost for Academic and Faculty Affairs. Additionally, Dr. Laura Curran, Associate Professor and Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the School of Social Work, will assume the role of Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs and will report to Senior Vice Provost Tomlinson-Clarke.

Dr. Tomlinson-Clarke and Dr. Curran will assume their new roles on July 1. They will fulfill responsibilities currently held by Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement and Faculty Affairs Ingrid Fulmer, who will be leaving Rutgers on July 1 after a decade of outstanding leadership to join the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as dean of its School of Labor and Employment Relations.

As Senior Vice Provost for Academic and Faculty Affairs, Dr. Tomlinson-Clarke will continue to fulfill her current responsibilities, which include supporting the Chancellor-Provost in all areas related to academic affairs and innovation. She will continue to provide leadership for high-quality academic programming, teaching and learning, assessment, and program review and evaluation processes. She will continue to develop and oversee policies and procedures in collaboration with the Chancellor-Provost and the Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs’ office; and support academic excellence across Rutgers–New Brunswick, including having day-to-day oversight of Douglass Residential College and the Honors College. She will also take on new responsibilities that include oversight of Rutgers–New Brunswick’s Big Ten Academic Alliance leadership programs and other initiatives that support faculty in the areas of leadership, mentoring, and career advancement.

Dr. Tomlinson-Clarke’s recent accomplishments as vice provost include developing policies for best practices in faculty hiring; policies and procedures for academic unit review; and developing revised policies and procedures for new program proposals. Her multiple leadership roles have included co-chairing the Academic Master Plan’s Academic Affairs Working Group; chairing the Future of Work Academic Affairs Working Group; serving on the Steering Committee and Advisory Council for the Community Engaged Scholarship Symposium focused on best practices to achieve health equity; and serving on the Promotion Review Committee. She and Vice Provost for Research Denise Hien are also working closely with the academic deans to support faculty efforts to advance community- and publicly-engaged scholarship and teaching. Dr. Tomlinson-Clarke also serves as Professor of Educational Psychology in the Graduate School of Education and is a licensed psychologist. Her research has responded to current social issues including the increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse and changing demographic profile of the U.S. population, the underrepresentation of minority students in the educational pipeline, and the expanding influence of globalization on the lives of individuals worldwide. She examines factors that contribute to the development and achievement of diverse learners in middle school through post-secondary education, and focuses on counseling training models and strategies that increase cultural competencies and help counselors, psychologists, teachers, and other professionals in providing culturally responsive services to clients and students.

As Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs, Dr. Curran will be responsible for the many faculty support initiatives that grew from Rutgers–New Brunswick’s 2019 faculty job satisfaction survey, conducted in partnership with the Harvard Graduate School of Education Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE). These COACHE survey-inspired initiatives will support faculty leadership, mentoring, recruitment, and retention.

As Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at the School of Social Work, Dr. Curran oversees the strategic and operational aspects of the school’s educational programming and infrastructure. Her administrative contributions, made in partnership with the larger SSW leadership team and faculty, include the establishment of three new dual degree programs; the launching of the school’s independent admissions offices to manage enrollment growth; innovations in the school’s BA curriculum including elective classes to attract students to the major; the successful reaccreditation of the MSW program; the development of a grant-funded, MSW-level certificate focused on practice with Latina/o/x communities; and enhanced pedagogical supports and programming for PTLs and faculty. Dr. Curran has served on numerous university-wide committees and was honored by the Rutgers–New Brunswick Provost for her leadership during the pandemic. She also served as a Provost Leadership Fellow for Faculty Advancement during 2021-2022. As an Associate Professor of Social Work, she has produced scholarship in multiple peer-reviewed journals following three lines of inquiry: the intellectual and practice history of the profession and, more specifically, the history of social work interventions with families and children; women’s perinatal health, with a focus on the social consciousness of motherhood and women’s experience of medical and social service interventions; and social work education.

Please join me in thanking Dr. Tomlinson-Clarke and Dr. Curran for taking on these important new roles. By contributing to the fulfillment and success of our outstanding faculty, their work will contribute to Rutgers–New Brunswick’s institutional mission of providing our students and the wider public with excellence in education, research, and service.

I want to close by congratulating Ingrid Fulmer on her appointment at Illinois and applauding her achievements at Rutgers since coming to the School of Management and Labor Relations in 2012. I am especially grateful for her efforts in expanding our portfolio of faculty and leadership development opportunities, particularly since she became our inaugural Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement and Faculty Affairs in July 2021.

Among other things, Dr. Fulmer developed the Provost Leadership Fellows for Faculty Advancement; developed the first in a series of new workshops for associate professors, including the Rutgers Associate Professor Project; and worked with the Center for Organizational Development to roll out the new Department Leaders Program–New Brunswick. She has also worked closely with Rutgers–New Brunswick’s academic units to help attract and retain excellent faculty and increase faculty diversity by coordinating and developing new processes related to faculty recruitment, onboarding, and retention.

Please join me in thanking Dr. Fulmer for her distinguished service and wishing her great success in her future endeavors.

Sincerely,

Francine Conway, Ph.D.
Chancellor-Provost, Rutgers University­–New Brunswick