Freund announces departure as Syracuse University’s vice chancellor and provost

Freund announces departure as Syracuse University’s vice chancellor and provostMay 19, 2006Kevin Morrowkdmorrow@syr.edu

Deborah A. Freund, Syracuse University’s vice chancellor and provost since 1999, today announced that she will leave her current position at the University, effective June 30, 2006, to pursue new academic and professional opportunities.

“I have had seven glorious years as vice chancellor and love SU with all my heart. For some time I have been thinking about exploring new challenges and believe the time is right for me to take on a leadership position at a major university. In fact, I am in serious discussions with several such institutions about potential leadership opportunities, although I have received no official offers,” Freund says. “Of course, none of this would have been possible without the substantial things we have accomplished here together. For that I am deeply grateful to all with whom I have had the great fortune of working, including our trustees, Chancellors Cantor and Shaw, faculty, staff, students and community members. It is now time to take the next step in my academic career and let another individual enjoy the great privilege I’ve had serving this wonderful institution.”

In addition to her role as SU’s chief academic officer, Freund, 53, is Distinguished Professor of Public Administration and Economics in SU’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and adjunct professor of orthopedics at SUNY Upstate Medical University. Upon stepping down as vice chancellor and provost, Freund is currently planning to return to her Distinguished Professorship at the Maxwell School and also do research at Harvard Medical School.

“For the past seven years, Debbie has made an extraordinary commitment to Syracuse University and put all of her energies into bolstering the University’s commitment to academic excellence,” Chancellor Cantor says. “She has recruited and selected outstanding deans, seeded important interdisciplinary programs, and demonstrated Syracuse University’s overall commitment to building a diverse community and challenging and retaining our students.

“We are all proud and delighted that Debbie is taking the next step in her academic and professional career and that she will be seizing new and exciting leadership opportunities in the months ahead,” Cantor adds.

In one of her major accomplishments at the University, Freund spearheaded the development of a new academic plan–introduced in spring 2001–intended to secure the foundation of SU’s student-centered research mission and establish “signature” experiences that distinguish a Syracuse education. Central to the plan have been strategic research partnerships in the areas of information management and technology; environmental systems and quality; collaborative design; and citizenship and social transformation; along with a concerted effort to strengthen four of the University’s already-existing signature areas? theory and practice integration, international field study, diversity and writing.

Freund also led the process that developed an academic space plan in support of the academic plan. Approved by SU’s Board of Trustees in fall 2002, the academic space plan has involved a major institutional investment?made through bonding and fundraising–in new and renovated facilities, including construction of a new building for the Martin J. Whitman School of Management (opened in January 2005), a third building for the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications (Newhouse III, to open in August 2007), a new, 210,000 square-foot Life Sciences Complex (to open in fall 2008), and the complete renovation of Slocum Hall for the School of Architecture.

A visiting scholar at Stanford, Harvard, Australian National and Keio universities, Freund is an internationally recognized health economist, known for research on Medicaid, health care outcomes and pharmacoeconomics. She has published widely and has been the principal investigator of many grants and contracts from the federal government and private foundations. She has testified as an expert before Congress and consulted for state governments and international pharmaceutical companies.

Freund came to SU in 1999 from Indiana University-Bloomington, where she had served as vice chancellor for academic affairs and dean of the faculties from 1994-99; associate dean for academic affairs in the IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA) from 1992-94; chair of the SPEA health sciences and administration faculty from 1988-92; and director of the IU School of Medicine’s Bowen Research Center from 1989-99.Prior to that, she was on the faculty of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and was director of the Program on Health Economics and Finance and the Clinical Economics Training Program.

She received an A.B. degree in classics from Washington University in St. Louis in 1973, as well as an M.P.H. degree in medical care administration in 1975, an M.A. degree in applied economics in 1975 and a Ph.D. in economics in 1980, all from the University of Michigan. Freund was awarded the Drotman Prize from the American Public Health Association in 1981 and the Kershaw Prize from the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management in 1991.

She has sat on the governing boards of Health Research and Education Trust, The Lifetime Health Care Companies, the National Association of College and University Business Officers and the National Women’s Hall of Fame.