October 10, 2016

Two executive vice chancellor finalists to visit


The last two finalists for the position of executive vice chancellor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln will give public presentations this week.

Mark Sheridan will host a faculty forum Oct. 10 and a public presentation Oct. 11. Cheryl Achterberg will host a faculty forum Oct. 12 and a public presentation Oct. 13. All sessions will be in the Nebraska Union auditorium. Sheridan and Achterberg are the third and fourth finalists for the position – the university’s top academic official – to visit Nebraska.

Finalists’ bios and public schedules are:

Sheridan, vice provost for graduate and postdoctoral affairs and dean of the Graduate School at Texas Tech University; faculty forum 3 p.m. Oct. 10; live-streamed public presentation 1:30 p.m. Oct. 11. At Texas Tech, Sheridan provides leadership to the graduate school as well as supervision of interdisciplinary graduate programs and coordination of graduate and postdoctoral education with the research and other academic activities.

He also was associate dean of the College of Graduate and Interdisciplinary Studies and director of the Cellular and Molecular Biology Program at North Dakota State University. Sheridan was the director of North Dakota’s EPSCoR program.

Sheridan’s research is in comparative physiology/endocrinology and has been funded by several agencies, including NSF and USDA. He has given about 40 invited/plenary lectures and has more than 135 referred publications. He also is editor, associate editor or editorial board member for four international journals.

Achterberg, dean of the College of Education and Human Ecology at the Ohio State University; faculty forum 3 p.m. Oct. 12; live-streamed public presentation 1:30 p.m. Oct. 13. A leading scholar in nutrition education and behavior interventions, Achterberg has established a national reputation for building programs, advancing research and resolving challenging collegiate issues.

Achterberg has led major initiatives including restructuring, accreditation, revision of 1,300 courses to improve curriculum as Ohio State moved from quarters to semesters and the creation of nine new undergraduate degrees along with four new graduate degree programs. She was on the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans Scientific Advisory Committee and continues to be involved with national food policy decision-making. She is a Fellow of the Culinary Institute of America. Among her honors is the 2015 Helen Denning Ullrich Award of Career Excellence from the Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior and the 1993 Mead Johnson Award for Research in Nutrition from the American Institute of Nutrition. She also presented the keynote lecture at the W.O. Atwater Centennial Celebration Symposium.

Before joining Ohio State, Achterberg was the inaugural dean of the College of Human Sciences at Iowa State University and was founding dean of the Schreyer Honors College at the Pennsylvania State University.

For more information on the search for the executive vice chancellor, click here.

Mark Sheridan
Cheryl Achterberg