May 12, 2011
DAVIS--Honey bee geneticist Robert E. Page Jr., emeritus professor and former chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology, is the newly appointed vice provost and dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Arizona State University, effective July 1.
ASU Provost and Executive Vice President Elizabeth D. Capaldi announced the appointment May 11.
Page's responsibilities will encompass student academic affairs, faculty development, promotion of research, and the planning and implementation of degree programs for a college that has nearly 18,000 undergraduate and more than 2,500 graduate students, according to an ASU news release. He also will be responsible for budgeting, planning, fundraising and personnel decisions.
Page, who received his doctorate in entomology at UC Davis in 1980, served as an assistant professor at Ohio State University before joining the UC Davis Department of Entomology in 1989. He chaired the department for five years, from 1999 to 2004.
Page's specialized genetic stock of honey bees is based at UC Davis. Bee breeder-geneticist Michael “Kim” Fondrk, who worked with Page at Ohio State University, UC Davis and ASU, manages the stock.
In 2004--the year Page retired from UC Davis--ASU recruited him as the founding director and dean of the School of Life Sciences, an academic unit within CLAS. At the time, his duties included organizing three departments—biology, microbiology and botany, totaling more than 600 faculty, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and staff--into one unified school.
As its founding director, Page established the school as a platform for discovery in the biomedical, genomic and evolutionary and environmental sciences. He also established ASU's Honey Bee Research Facility.
In a news release written by ASU's Carol Hughes, ASU president Michael M. Crow praised him as “ideally suited to head the university's core academic unit.”
”Rob Page has a track record of academic, scientific and administrative excellence and has exhibited strategic vision in organizing faculties into a school without disciplinary boundaries,” said ASU President Michael M. Crow. “That is the type of experience and achievement that makes him ideally suited to head the university's core academic unit.”
“Rob has been a strong leader of one of the largest units in CLAS,” said Provost Capaldi, “and has shown he can bridge many disciplines, bring faculty together, innovate in curriculum and instruction, and build excellence."
Said Page: “I have been privileged this past seven years to be part of the transformation of Arizona State University under President Crow's vision and leadership. The School of Life Sciences was the first experiment in the new school-centric model and offered many challenges and rewards. I look forward to taking what I have learned and advancing the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, certainly one of the largest and most complex colleges, anywhere.”
The college's all-funds budget for the current fiscal year is $282 million, and research expenditures in the college for the 12-month period ending Jan. 31 totaled more than $112 million.
An internationally recognized scholar, Page is an elected foreign member of the Brazilian Academy of Science, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the oldest scientific academy of science, the Germany Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. He was elected to Leopoldina, founded in 1652, for his pioneering research in behavioral genetics of honey bees.
UC Davis entomology professor James R. Carey, who continues to work with Page on reserach projects, describes him as "one of the most gifted scientists, administrators, and teachers I have had the privilege to know in 30 years in academia.”
Page is the recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist Award, the highest honor given by the German government to foreign scientists. His publications total more than 200 scientific papers, nine general media articles, 23 book chapters and review articles. He also co-edited three books and co-authored a textbook.
Page is a highly cited author on such topics as Africanized bees, genetics and evolution of social organization, sex determination, and division of labor in insect societies
(Editor's Note: Carol Hughes of ASU”S College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, is the lead author of this news release)
Related Links:
Reproductive Ground Plan' for Honey Bees That Began at UC Davis Is Featured in Science
Honey Bee Geneticist Robert Page Elected to Prestigious Germany Academy of Sciences Leopoldina
Honey Bee Stock Heading Back to UC Davis
Arizona State University News Release
--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894
