KALAMAZOO--As the result of a national search, Dr. Lewis R. Pyenson, a research professor and historian at the University of Louisiana, is set to assume the role of dean of the Western Michigan University Graduate College, effective June 15.

A scholar with extensive international experience, Pyenson served as dean of Louisiana's Graduate School for six years, from 1995 to 2001, before moving to his current role as research professor at the Center for Louisiana Studies and professor of history. Pyenson, whose academic focus is the history of science, also is an adjunct professor of physics, philosophy, modern languages and cognitive science at UL-Lafayette, a school with some 16,000 students, including nearly 1,700 at the graduate level.

Pyenson's background includes faculty affiliations with such schools as the universities of Toronto and Montreal and the Virtual University of Quilmes in Argentina. He also has served as a visiting fellow at Princeton and as Suntory lecturer at four Japanese universities. In addition, he served in 2000 as a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow in Argentina at the Ethnographical Museum in Buenos Aires, the Atomic Research Center in Bariloche and the Cordoba Academy of Sciences. In 2005, he lectured as the George Sarton Chair at the University of Ghent in Belgium, and he is the recipient of the 2006 Herbert C. Pollock Award of the Dudley Observatory in Schenectady, New York.

"Dr. Pyenson brings with him a successful track record in graduate program leadership as well as a wealth of experience as an active scholar in his own right," says Dr. Linda Delene, WMU provost and vice president for academic affairs. "His background is an unusual blend of science and the humanities that I think will be invaluable in his work here at WMU. This University will benefit from his energetic leadership and creativity as well as the unique point of view that comes from his own research and writing. He will also participate in the comprehensive review of graduate programs now under way."

A prolific writer, Pyenson is the author or co-author of six books and scores of book chapters and professional articles. His books include "The Young Einstein: The Advent of Relativity," "The Art of Teaching Physics," co-edited with Jean-François Gauvin, and "Servants of Nature: A History of Scientific Institutions, Enterprises, and Sensibilities," which he wrote with co-author Susan Sheets-Pyenson.

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