2020 2020: UMass President Meehan announces Acting Chancellor & Provost

Vice Chancellor Mark Preble to serve as acting chancellor and Professor Michael Goodman as acting provost.

July 31, 2020

TO:  UMass Dartmouth students, faculty, and staff

FROM:  President Marty Meehan

RE:  Leadership transition

I am pleased to announce that I have appointed Vice Chancellor Mark Preble to serve as acting chancellor and Professor Michael Goodman as acting provost. While the campus enters the final phase of planning for a new academic year that will require extraordinary teamwork by administration, faculty and staff, I have full confidence that Mark and Michael, working with senior leadership, faculty, staff, and students, will have UMass Dartmouth fully prepared for a new academic year.

These appointments have been made after consultation with faculty, staff, students, and members of the SouthCoast community. I want to thank Mark and Michael for accepting this leadership responsibility as we continue the search for longer term leadership that will position UMass Dartmouth for success for many years to come.

I recognize leadership transitions cause stress for institutions, especially during a global health crisis, but I also know that UMass Dartmouth has much to be proud of and much to build upon.

Its national stature is rising. Biology Professor Erin Bromage has become a go-to source of information on COVID-19 for CNN and other national media; College of Engineering professors Hua Fang and Honggang Wang were just awarded a $452,178 National Institutes of Health grant to apply data science to fighting diseases such as diabetes. Multiple faculty have teamed up to secure $4.5 million in Office of Naval Research funding. The National Science Foundation just named STEM doctoral student Akira Harper a prestigious 2020 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.

All of the above examples have one thing in common. They are focused on building a healthier, more opportunity-rich future. While we are all dealing with pandemic-induced uncertainty, there is one certainty: UMass Dartmouth’s future is bright.

Mark Preble will bring a deep understanding of the challenges facing university students, faculty and staff and an ability to lead teams responding to challenges. He has served in multiple high-level management positions at UMass over the last 17 years. He currently oversees talent development, diversity initiatives, and labor relations at UMass Dartmouth and served as vice chancellor for administration and finance from 2013 to 2015. Prior to his current UMass Dartmouth service, he led the human resources division for the 24,000-employee UMass System.

Mark is a product of public higher education, graduating in 1985 from UMass Boston and returning to the university to earn a graduate certificate in dispute resolution. He earned his law degree at Suffolk University and has taught Human Resources Management, Public Sector Labor Law, and Labor Negotiation and Arbitration at the undergraduate, graduate, and law school levels. From 1994 to 2002, he served on the Massachusetts Labor Relations Commission as staff attorney and administrative law judge, and, from 1999-2002, as commissioner.

Michael Goodman is a Professor of Public Policy who has recently served as the President of the Faculty Senate, representing the faculty in critical university decision-making and strategic planning. He has a clear understanding of the university’s importance to the SouthCoast region and of higher education’s importance to the Massachusetts economy.

Professor Goodman joined UMass Dartmouth in 2009 after serving for eight years as the Director of Economic and Public Policy Research at the UMass Donahue Institute. An economic sociologist, he is past president of the New England Economic Partnership, a nonprofit organization made up of leading regional analysts that produces semi-annual economic forecasts of the economic outlook for each of the six New England states.

He has authored or co-authored more than 50 professional publications on a wide range of public policy issues including regional economic development and housing policy as well as demographic and other applied social science research topics. He has supported this research by generating more than $5 million in external grant and contract funding from a diverse array of public and private sources.

A leading expert on the Massachusetts economy, Professor Goodman currently serves as Co-Editor of MassBenchmarks, the journal of the Massachusetts economy published by the University of Massachusetts Donahue Institute in cooperation with the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.  Professor Goodman earned his MA and Ph.D. at Boston University.

Together, Mark and Michael bring valuable perspectives to these leadership positions at a critical moment.  My team at the President’s Office and I look forward to working with them and the entire UMass Dartmouth community to move UMass Dartmouth forward. While these are challenging times for everybody, and we all are adapting to a new normal of living, working, learning, teaching, and discovery, I believe our best days are ahead.