HUNTINGTON -- Marshall University has named the founding dean of its new Honors College and scheduled its opening for the fall of 2010.

The new dean, Mary Todd, has been vice president for Academic Affairs and dean of the faculty for the past five years at Ohio Dominican University in Columbus, Ohio.

Gayle Ormiston, provost and senior vice president for Academic Affairs at Marshall, said Todd will start her new job Aug. 1. She also will hold a faculty appointment as full professor in Marshall's Department of Religious Studies.

"Dr. Mary Todd is an experienced faculty member and university administrator who has significant background in honors programming," Ormiston said. "I am very excited about the possibilities the creation of the Honors College presents to the university and I am very pleased that (she) will join Marshall to help us navigate the process of building the Honors College as its founding dean."

The Honor College, added Ormiston, will add visibility to the university and attract students who might have attended another school because Marshall did not have an Honors College.

"When (high school) honors students are looking for a university, they look for places there could be an honor college," he said, adding that talk of Marshall adding such a college goes back to at least 2005.

Marshall has an honors program, but it is housed in the Center for Academic Excellence. It will be transitioned to an Honors College and include the Society of Yeager Scholars. Honors students still will be admitted as usual but they will be in the Honors College, not the Center for Academic Excellence. The administrative structure of the college will be determined through a strategic planning process.

Ormiston said many regional universities have honors colleges, such as his former employer, Kent State University. He said characteristics of an honors college typically means it is a program that attracts top academic high school students, a program that affects the honors students as well as the student body as a whole and usually includes an honors thesis or individual research opportunities. In addition, it's a more challenging path toward graduation.

Ormiston said the biggest difference to Marshall's current Center for Academic Excellence is the lack of a thesis requirement, although every major offers a capstone project that students can choose to accept.

As part of Todd's first year, she'll likely help define the current honors courses more clearly, Ormiston said.

Todd said Ormiston's and Marshall President Stephen Kopp's vision for the college contributed to her decision to pursue the dean's position.

"I was attracted to ... establish an honors college to build on the already strong reputation of the Center for Academic Excellence and the Yeager Scholars Program," she said. "Honors education serves the entire university as a laboratory for teaching and learning through its model of excellence and innovation."

She will collaborate with the provost office, the college deans, department chairs and faculty to design the Honors College. That process should result in a strategic plan for the Honors College to guide its development for at least three years.

Before going to Ohio Dominican in 2004, Todd served two years as assistant vice president for academics at Concordia University-Chicago. There, she was responsible for all mission-specific and interdisciplinary curricula and programs while serving as director of the Honors Program (from 1998 to 2004) and a member of the faculty.

Todd received her bachelor of arts in history in 1969 from Valparaiso University in Valparaiso, Ind., and her master of general studies in 1990 from Roosevelt University in Chicago. She earned her doctorate in American history in 1996 from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

AP Video

File photo/The Herald-Dispatch Old Main on Marshall University's main campus.

Purchase this photo