Appointments
Penn State Intercom......February 8 , 2001

Loomis to lead the University's
World Wide Web effort

Frederick D. Loomis, director of the Solutions Institute in the School of Information Sciences and Technology (IST), has been selected to lead a University-wide effort to guide the implementation of strategies for more effective uses of the World Wide Web across the University's multiple missions.

Serving formally as the special assistant to executive vice president and provost Rodney A. Erickson, Loomis will work with a team of staff and faculty members from key stakeholder units to lay out specific strategies for Web implementation, and make recommendations concerning the World Wide Web-related actions and investments to advance the University's academic and administrative interests over the next several years.

The final report issued by the University Web Strategies and Directions Task Force will provide a road map for this process.

In his new role, Loomis also will be one of the key members of the Web Strategies Implementation Steering Committee. Chaired by Erickson, the committee will be made up of budget executives whose units are most influenced by Web implementation.

He will continue to serve as director of the IST Solutions Institute, a position which he has held for nearly a year.

A Penn State alumnus with advanced degrees in higher education and public administration, Loomis has been an administrator at the University for more than 12 years. Before joining IST, he was director of administration, planning and information technology for continuing and distance education in the Office of Outreach and Cooperative Extension.

IST names associate dean
for research, graduate programs

David L. Hall has been appointed the associate dean for research and graduate programs in the School of Information Sciences and Technology (IST).

Hall joins IST from the University's Applied Re-search Laboratory (ARL), where he served as associate director and senior scientist.

At ARL, he oversaw the 150-person Information and Network Systems Office, composed of four divisions: Information Science and Technology, Navigation Research and Development, Systems and Operations Automation, and Communications Science and Technology.

IST will formally launch its Ph.D. program this fall and is now recruiting for its first class of doctoral students. Next year, the school expects to introduce both a research-oriented master's degree program and a professional master's degree program.

Hall will be responsible for those programs as well as research grant administration, and leadership of IST faculty research efforts.

He comes to IST with more than 25 years of experience in research, research management and systems development. His personal research agenda has covered a wide variety of areas, including stellar structures, celestial mechanics, digital signal processing, software engineering and automated reasoning. Multisensor data fusion is a particular focus for Hall and his work in this area is recognized both nationally and internationally.

Hall is the author of more than 175 papers, reports, books and book chapters, and he has delivered numerous lectures on his research, research management and artificial intelligence. In addition, he has been a faculty member at Penn State and the University of Colorado and has served on the graduate-degree candidacy committees of nearly a dozen students.

Watters joins Career Development Center
at Penn State Erie

Andrew E. Watters has joined the Career Development Center at Penn State Erie as associate director.

In this position his responsibilities will include on-campus recruiting, job fairs and career counseling.

Watters has served as an admissions counselor at Penn State Erie since July 1998, working with freshman admissions and prospect information management and research. He received his bachelor's degree in psychology from Cornell University, a master of science degree in psychology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a certificate of advanced study in counseling services from the State University of New York at Oswego.

Before working at Penn State Erie, he was assistant director and minority internship coordinator for experience-based education at SUNY Oswego.

Back