Colm O’Muircheartaigh Named Harris School Dean
Colm O'Muircheartaigh (o-MURR-a-hur-tig), a professor in the Harris School of Public Policy Studies and a senior fellow at the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), has been appointed dean of the School. Dan Black, a professor in the Harris School, has been named deputy dean.In an announcement today, University of Chicago Provost Thomas F. Rosenbaum said, "Colm's rigorous approach to scholarship, commitment to education and deep knowledge of the Harris School will serve him well as dean. President [Robert] Zimmer and I look forward to welcoming him to the academic leadership of the University."
Said Zimmer, "Situated within a university that has the finest collection of social science scholars anywhere in the world, the Harris School is well positioned to contribute powerfully to the direction of public policy studies across the globe."
An applied statistician, O'Muircheartaigh serves as principal investigator on the National Science Foundation's Internet Panel Recruitment Study, co-principal investigator on the National Social Life Health and Aging Project, and a leader in national and international organizations of statisticians.
He previously served on the faculty of the London School of Economics and Political Science and was the first director of the LSE's Methodology Institute. He completed his undergraduate work at University College Dublin and received his MS and PhD in statistics from the LSE.
"At the Harris School, teaching is at the core of our being," O'Muircheartaigh said. "A question raised in class can encourage us to re-examine something we thought we knew all along. This is a great place to bring together teaching, theory and application."
Black's interests lie in labor economics and applied econometrics. He currently serves as the principal investigator for NORC's 1997 Cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth.
Before joining the Harris School in 2007, he was on faculty at the University of Kentucky and Syracuse University. Black holds a BA and MA in history from the University of Kansas and an MS and PhD in economics from Purdue University.
"The Harris School is rich in academic tradition, rooted in outstanding contributions that the University of Chicago has made in the social sciences, with world-class scholars who have changed the way people view public policy," said Black. "I am excited to help guide our continued growth in those areas."
O'Muircheartaigh succeeds Susan Mayer, who announced last year that she would be stepping down after serving as dean since 2002. His five-year term will start on July 1. Black will be taking over as deputy dean from Charles Glaser, who has held the position of deputy dean since 1998.
Read the University's press release.
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