{"id":73231,"date":"2022-04-29T09:01:48","date_gmt":"2022-04-29T13:01:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/?p=73231"},"modified":"2022-05-02T09:18:01","modified_gmt":"2022-05-02T13:18:01","slug":"provost-announces-resignation-plans-to-return-to-faculty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/04_29_2022\/provost-announces-resignation-plans-to-return-to-faculty","title":{"rendered":"Provost Announces Resignation, Plans to Return to Faculty"},"content":{"rendered":"

The University of Toledo Provost Karen Bjorkman has announced her plans to resign from her current position effective July 29, 2022, returning to the faculty after taking a one-year sabbatical leave.<\/p>\n

Bjorkman holds a tenured faculty position as Distinguished University Professor and the Helen Luedtke Brooks Professor of Astronomy in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.<\/p>\n

During her tenure as provost, Bjorkman oversaw the successful completion of the University\u2019s 2017-2022 Strategic Plan, the University\u2019s Higher Learning Commission reaccreditation and the safe reopening of campus following the COVID-19 pandemic. Student retention and graduation rates have continually increased during Bjorkman\u2019s tenure as provost.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Bjorkman<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cI am grateful for Dr. Bjorkman\u2019s leadership during these past several years. Her passion for our faculty\u2019s scholarly activities, and even more importantly, her commitment to our students\u2019 success is evident in everything she does,\u201d UToledo President Gregory Postel said. \u201cHer leadership was instrumental in the successful 10-year reaffirmation of our institutional accreditation. I cannot thank her enough for all she has done for our University.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bjorkman has been a member of the UToledo faculty since 1996 when she joined the Department of Physics and Astronomy. She served as the founding dean of the University\u2019s College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics from 2010 to 2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has been an honor and privilege to serve our University in this leadership role, but my heart is in the observatory and the classroom,\u201d she said. \u201cI look forward to getting back to advancing our understanding of the universe, and sharing my passion for astronomy with our students and our community.\u201d<\/p>\n

A leader in the research field of stellar astrophysics, applying spectropolarimetry to better understand the variable gaseous disks around massive stars, Bjorkman\u2019s research has focused on studying the physical characteristics of these disks and the mechanisms behind their formation and variability.<\/p>\n

In 2021, Bjorkman was elected to the Board of Directors of the Associated Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), and in 2022, she was elected to the national governing board of the Association for Women in Science (AWIS). She was previously named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world\u2019s largest multidisciplinary scientific and engineering society, in recognition of her important contributions to scientific discovery.<\/p>\n

Prior to joining UToledo, Bjorkman was a scientist in the University of Wisconsin\u2019s Space Astronomy Laboratory and a systems engineer for Martin Marietta Denver Aerospace. She earned her Ph.D. and master\u2019s degrees in astrophysics from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and a bachelor\u2019s degree in physics from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.<\/p>\n

The University intends to announce an interim provost in the next several weeks, and will conduct a national search for the position beginning in July.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"<\/a>

Dr. Karen Bjorkman, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, announced her plans to resign from her current position effective July 29, 2022, returning to the faculty after taking a one-year sabbatical leave.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":870,"featured_media":70702,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,32,34,35,61,36,53,30,38,1,40,41,42,62,7],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73231"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/870"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73231"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73233,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73231\/revisions\/73233"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}