OSU Dean of College of Arts and Sciences announces retirement
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Sherwood will retire from the position at the end of July 2012. He serves a college of 24 departments and about 700 faculty and staff covering the fine arts, humanities, social services and sciences. He started as dean in July 2004.
“We appreciate Dean Sherwood's outstanding leadership in guiding OSU's largest and most diverse college,” said OSU President Burns Hargis. “He elevated our programs and strengthened research across the college. We congratulate him on his distinguished higher education career and his impact on countless students. We wish him all the best.”
During his time as dean about half of the faculty in the college were hired, together with most of the current department heads. The numbers of minority faculty in the college has tripled in the past seven years.
Sherwood says that it has been an honor to serve as dean and that he has been fortunate to have been supported by an excellent team of principal college officers and department heads. He is proud of the high quality teaching and research in the college, which is responsible for 55 percent of all the instruction at OSU.
Sherwood is proud of the student and faculty successes during his time as dean, and appreciative of the support provided to the college by donors, with current funding levels approaching $12 million annually. He appreciates the service of the 200 staff members that have been essential for the success of the college.
Several new graduate programs have been established during his tenure (two doctorates and a master’s). Others are planned. During Sherwood’s time as dean there have been substantial improvements in the facilities on campus with buildings such as Murray Hall and the Henry Bellmon Research Center enhancing the work environment for students and faculty in the college.
The college established a student success center and a faculty resource center that have provided enhanced support for student and faculty activities. Sherwood introduced a review program of all the academic departments in the college that now has been completed. The program will assist departments in developing their vision.
New interdisciplinary centers have been established in the past seven years, including the Doel Reed Center for the Arts and the Native American Studies Center. Additionally, research activities of the college have grown significantly, with many new major grants and a substantial increase in the number of proposals being submitted to funding agencies.
Sherwood is a surface scientist and serves as a Regents Professor of Physics. His research group has been involved in surface analysis (especially X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy) of materials with particular interest in electrode surfaces, corrosion systems, and carbon fiber and composite surfaces. The work is an example of how basic science can be applied to analyze and understand important practical problems, many of which have a direct relevance to industry.
He has authored or co-authored more than 210 publications, has given nearly 130 invited research lectures at universities, research centers and conferences, and has served as major professor for 30 graduate students, 26 who graduated with doctorates and three with master’s. He also has directed the work of 12 postdoctoral fellows and has served as a journal editor and on the editorial board of six journals. His work has been supported by 35 grants.
Sherwood’s list of appointments and honors is long and impressive. He received a first class honours B.Sc. degree from St. Andrews University in Scotland and the Forrester Prize and Irvine Jubilee Medal (best undergraduate performance in chemistry). He was a graduate student at Cambridge University in England receiving an master of arts degree and a doctorate in 1970. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, and a Fellow of the AVS- Science and Technology Society.
Sherwood’s contributions were acknowledged by the award of a Regents Professorship at Oklahoma State University in 2007, a University Distinguished Professorship at Kansas State University in 1997 and the conferring of the degree of Sc.D. by the University of Cambridge in the U.K. in 1995.
He joined the faculty at Cambridge as a Fellow of Downing College and Salters Company Fellow in 1970. Sherwood left Cambridge to start work on surface science at Newcastle University in 1972. He left Newcastle University as a senior lecturer in 1985 to join the faculty at Kansas State University, where he served until 2004 as a faculty member. He was head of the chemistry department from 1997 to 2004 and is currently a University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Chemistry. Sherwood served as a visiting associate professor at the University of California at Berkeley in 1976, visiting professor at the University of Bari (Italy) in 1984, a visiting scientist at Kodak in 1986 and at the CSIRO National Measurement Laboratory (Sydney, Australia) in 1987. In 1990 and 199, he served as program officer for Analytical and Surface Chemistry at the National Science Foundation. He received an Outstanding Performance Award for his service.
He received the Presidential Award for Outstanding Department Head from Kansas State University in 2003. Sherwood is an associate editor of Surface Science Spectra journals, and is on the editorial board of Surface and Interface Analysis. He is treasurer of the Applied Surface Science Division and served on the board of directors of the AVS-Science and Technology Society from 1999-2000. In 2006 and 2007, Sherwood served as president of the Da Vinci Institute – Oklahoma’s Creativity Think Tank, and currently serves on the board of directors of Creative Oklahoma. During his time in Oklahoma Sherwood has been one of the commissioners on the Oklahoma Commission for Teacher Preparation.
The College of Arts and Sciences is comprised of 24 departments. To learn more visit http://cas.okstate.edu.