Contact: Sammy McDavid
STARKVILLE, Miss.--A veteran faculty member, aquaculture researcher and chairman of Mississippi State's distinguished professor group is the university's new graduate school dean.
Louis R. "Lou" D'Abramo also will serve as associate vice president for academic affairs at the land-grant institution. A wildlife and fisheries professor, he has held the rank of William L. Giles Distinguished Professor--MSU's highest faculty recognition--since 2003.
His appointment formally was approved at the August meeting of the Board of Trustees, State Institutions of Higher Learning.
Since joining the faculty in 1984, D'Abramo has compiled a long record of professional achievements. Formerly a post-graduate researcher at the University of California, Davis, he first worked at MSU as an assistant professor of wildlife and fisheries and assistant aquaculture biologist with the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station.
D'Abramo's many efforts on behalf of aquaculture--basically, fish farming--earned the highest award of the World Aquaculture Society, as well as major recognitions from the U.S. Freshwater Prawn and Shrimp Growers Association and MSU College of Forest Resources. He recently served as associate director of the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium.
In addition to holding the additional academic title of John Grisham Master Teacher, he has been honored on campus with the Ralph Powe Research Excellence and Grisham Faculty Excellence awards, among several others.
After graduating summa cum laude from Assumption College in Worcester, Mass, D'Abramo went on to complete master's and doctoral degrees in ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale University.
MSU offers graduate degrees at the master's, educational specialist and doctoral levels. Graduate enrollment has grown from some 2,800 in 2003 to nearly 3,300 last year.
For more information about Mississippi State University, see http://www.msstate.edu/.