Vice Chancellor and Provost Eric F. Spina today named Senior Associate Dean Michael J. Wasylenko the interim dean-designate of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University; he will assume the interim deanship in mid-summer. Wasylenko will replace Dean Mitchel B. Wallerstein, who is leaving the school after seven years to become president of Baruch College.
“Mike Wasylenko is the perfect person to lead the Maxwell School during the period of the search for a new dean,” Spina says, “particularly since the Chancellor and I see this as a time of continued advancement in Maxwell, not as a time to idle. Mike is well known to the Maxwell and SU communities as an academic leader with high integrity, strong values and terrific judgment. Many Maxwell faculty and staff were highly complimentary of Mike in their nominations of him for this position, and this simply reinforced what Nancy and I have long known about the quality of Mike as a person and his skill as a leader. We truly do look forward to working with him.”
Wasylenko, a professor of economics, has been on the Maxwell School faculty since 1986 and has served as the school’s senior associate dean for academic affairs and administration since 2003. As chief operating officer, he manages the school’s endowment accounts, finances and budgets; oversees the information, computing and technology functions and staff; works closely with the dean and development staff to shape gift agreements; coordinates with the Office of Campus Planning, Design and Construction, architects and contractors to manage and renovate building space; along with chairs and program directors, and in close consultation with the dean, plans faculty hires and strategies for department programs; and serves as personnel director for school staff.
In addition, Wasylenko has been an active participant in and a leader of numerous University committees and councils related to graduate and undergraduate programs, including leading a major task force to study the conversion of the University’s centralized budget system to a responsibility center management (RCM) system; serving on a five-person team to negotiate a new union contract for part-time instructors at SU; leading the search committee for a new director of athletics; and heading a task force to establish “Summer University” at Syracuse.
Wasylenko has also served as the University’s faculty representative to the NCAA for 10 years. Reporting to the Chancellor, he works closely with the Department of Athletics on compliance with new areas of NCAA legislation, legislative enforcement and student-athlete welfare. In this role, he has developed strong working relationships with members of the athletic department, while advocating for the best interests of the University and its constituencies.
As an academic, Wasylenko specializes in public finance issues and has published extensively on state and local finance, firm location, tax incentives and population decentralization within metropolitan areas. He is co-author of “Foreign Direct Investment in the United States: Issues, Magnitudes, and Location Choice of New Manufacturing Plants.” Wasylenko has advised numerous state tax commissions, and his work has taken him to more than a dozen countries, including Egypt, Hungary, Jamaica, South Africa and Thailand.
Wasylenko received a B.S. degree in mathematics from St. Joseph’s University of Philadelphia. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the Maxwell School in 1975 and held faculty positions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Pennsylvania State University before returning to Maxwell.
Vice Chancellor Spina is meeting with the Maxwell community in the next two weeks to discuss the dean search process and to identify the qualities and characteristics desired in the next dean. The search is expected to begin in late spring and extend into the 2010-11 academic year.
