Penn State Lauds Larson for Administrative Excellence
Daniel Larson, Verne Willaman Dean of Penn State University's Eberly College of Science, has been honored by the University with the 2012 Award for Administrative Excellence. The award is given to a faculty or staff member whose performance, methods, and achievements exemplify the highest standards of administrative excellence. Since Larson became dean in 1998, the Eberly College of Science has made stunning advancements in national rankings of faculty quality and research productivity -- important factors for excellence in both graduate and undergraduate science programs.
Individuals who nominated Larson for the Penn State Award for Administrative Excellence cited a range of factors contributing to his "phenomenal" accomplishments as dean of the college, including his support for graduate research and undergraduate instruction, his high professional and ethical standards and the quality of his personal leadership style, his success in recruiting outstanding faculty members, his support for diversity and promotion of a climate that is inclusive and respectful, and his support for initiatives to enhance the public understanding of science.
Among Larson's achievements since he became dean of the Eberly College of Science in 1998 is the dramatic rise in national rankings of all the academic departments within the college. A comprehensive National Research Council (NRC) study released in 2011 ranked the performance of over 5,000 graduate programs in 62 fields at 212 U.S. universities, including all of the major research universities. A conservative analysis of the NRC results shows that during the 15-year period ending in 2010, the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics rose from 21st place to 4th nationwide, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology rose from 45th to 29th, Chemistry rose from 18th to 12th, Mathematics rose from 37th to 7th, Physics rose from 55th to 13th, and Statistics rose from 19th to 9th. Biology, not ranked in 1995, is now ranked 15th.
Since Larson became dean in 1998, the Eberly College of Science has made stunning advancements in national rankings of faculty quality and research productivity -- important factors for excellence in both graduate and undergraduate science programs.
"Since becoming the dean of the college, Larson has taken a second-tier Big Ten science college and has transformed it into clearly the finest Big Ten program and one that is widely viewed not only as ranking in the top 10 in the United States but also as the best public science college after the University of California at Berkeley," wrote one nominator. Others noted that Larson accomplished these improvements while simultaneously advancing instruction performance, significantly increasing the number of underrepresented minorities and women on the faculty and in leadership positions, and hosting a vigorous public-outreach program -- all while using only a small fraction of the funds available to competing universities.
Larson was lauded for his extraordinary creativity and vision in recruiting and retaining world-class faculty members and enhancing the diversity of the faculty. For example, his transformative role in the sciences at Penn State includes his support for innovative recruitment strategies that engage multiple departments both within the college and across other Penn State colleges. The Genomics and Computational Biology Initiative successfully recruited 27 joint-appointment faculty to 5 departments in the Eberly College of Science and in 3 other Penn State colleges.
Praise for Larson's success in significantly increasing the quality of science instruction includes his support of the new Center for Excellence in Science Education, which works to engage faculty and improve teaching and learning across the college. He also was influential in promoting the soon-to-be-established integrated undergraduate/graduate degrees as options available to all Penn State students, allowing them to obtain a B. S. degree in mathematics, chemistry, physics, or biology plus a master's degree in education. Larson also supported the development of a new and innovative Master's of Applied Statistics program, which now has become a highly successful World Campus offering.
Nominators cited a range of personality and leadership characteristics that contributed to Larson's achieving his ambitious goals for the college. They praised his visionary leadership, integrity, wisdom, uncompromising standards, resilience after setbacks, sincerity, judgement, listening and observation skills, willingness to take risks when there could be a substantial benefit, proclivity for seeking out opinions of others before making important decisions, and accessibility to all faculty members in the college.
"There is a deep sense of community and pride in our college that directly stems from Dan Larson's leadership and example," one nominator said. "He has high professional and ethical standards that challenge us to do our best, while at the same time he is supportive and caring of the climate and the diversity of our community." Another nominator concluded, "By fostering the conditions in which academic excellence can flourish, Dan's forward-looking leadership has helped to construct a cornerstone of foundational excellence for Penn State that surely will have long-range implications for the future of the University."
Larson also is known for his leadership contributions to major U. S. science initiatives and advisory panels. He is an accomplished researcher whose experiments have contributed to the understanding of important processes and properties in atomic, molecular, and optical physics.
He is the chair of the board of directors of the Hobby-Eberly Telescope -- one of the world's largest optical telescopes and an instrument for which Penn State is a major partner institution. Larson also is past chair of the Space Telescope Institute Council, providing oversight of the Space Telescope Science Institute, the organization that manages the science mission of the Hubble Space Telescope and the future James Webb Space Telescope.
Larson was honored in 2006 as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in recognition of his distinguished research, professional, and academic contributions to the advancement of physics. Larson also is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a member of the Optical Society of America, and an elected member of the honorary societies Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Xi, and Sigma Pi Sigma.
He has served on many national planning groups, science-evaluation panels, science-advocacy committees, funding-agency panels, and review boards. He has supervised the doctoral dissertations of 21 physicists and has published numerous research papers in peer-reviewed journals.
Among his many service contributions to Penn State, Larson has served as vice-chair and chair of the Academic Leadership Council, member of the Applied Research Laboratory Advisory Board, member of the University Cost-Savings Task Force, member of the Faculty Senate Committee on Faculty Rights and Responsibilities, vice-chair and chair of the Penn State United Way Campaign, member of the board of directors of the Penn State Research Foundation, co-leader of the Health Sciences 2020 Team, member of the University Strategic Planning Council, chair of the Achieving Excellence Task Force, and member of the University Academic Program and Administrative Services Review Core Council.
Before joining Penn State in 1998 as dean of the Eberly College of Science, Larson was the Maxine S. and Jesse W. Beams professor of physics at the University of Virginia, where he was among the most highly respected researchers and consistently was ranked among the best physics teachers. At the beginning of his career, Larson was an assistant professor of physics at Harvard University from 1970 to 1975, and was an associate professor of physics there from 1975 to 1978. He then joined the University of Virginia in 1978 as an associate professor of physics, was promoted to professor in 1987, was associate dean of arts and sciences from 1989 to 1991, was chairman of the physics department there from 1991 to 1997, and was named the Maxine S. and Jesse W. Beams Professor of Physics in 1996. He also was a visiting professor at the U.S. National Bureau of Standards in 1985 and 1986 and at Chalmers University in Sweden in 1986 and a visiting scientist at the Laboratoire Aimé Cotton in France in 1991. He joined the Penn State faculty as professor of physics and dean of the Eberly College of Science in 1998 and was named the Verne M. Willaman Dean of the Eberly College of Science in 2001.
Larson graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor-of-arts degree in physics and mathematics from St. Olaf College in 1966. He earned his master's degree in 1967 and his doctoral degree in 1971, both in physics at Harvard University. He was named a Woodrow Wilson fellow in 1966 and was a National Science Foundation graduate fellow from 1966 to 1970.