Provost Candidate One announced for May 9 open forum

Mississippi State University and the Search Committee for Provost and Executive Vice President invite interested members of the campus community to attend public presentations by each finalist.

Candidate One: Dr. Gregory Dunaway, Thursday, May 9, 4-5 p.m., Colvard Union, Foster Ballroom M

Gregory Dunaway is the dean of West Virginia University’s Eberly College of Arts and Sciences and professor of sociology. As dean, Dunaway is the chief academic administrator of the largest and most diverse academic college at WVU.  Dunaway is the former dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at Mississippi State University, where he spent more than 25 years of his career.  While at MSU, he also served as the associate dean for academic and student affairs.  He was also the former Thomas Bailey Professor of Sociology and department head of sociology.  He was appointed as a Research Fellow at the Social Science Research Center at MSU and coordinator of the Mississippi Crime and Justice Research Unit.

His research interests include examining social factors associated with crime and delinquency; trends, inequality and crime and justice; and criminal justice policy. He has conducted research on a number of justice programs in Mississippi, including performing an evaluation of Mississippi’s Drug Court Program, a survey of Mississippi’s Juvenile Detention Facilities and a study on disproportionate minority contact within the Mississippi juvenile justice system. Dunaway has won both teaching and administrative service awards at Mississippi State. He is the former president of the Southern Criminal Justice Association. He earned his B.A. from Loyola University Maryland and his M.S. and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Cincinnati.

The Search Committee for Provost and Executive Vice President is mindful of the critical balance between individual privacy and the public’s right to know. It is our responsibility to keep constituent groups informed of the progress of the search, and we are committed to that course.

To maintain the confidentiality necessary to attract top candidates for as long as is practical, the committee will provide the university community the names and biographical sketches for each of the three candidates on the day before their individual campus interviews.

For additional information about the search, please visit www.provostsearch.msstate.edu.

Additional sessions will be held:

—Candidate Two: Friday, May 10, 4-5 p.m., Colvard Union, Foster Ballroom M

—Candidate Three: Tuesday, May 14, 4-5 p.m., Colvard Union, Foster Ballroom M