It is my great pleasure to share the wonderful news that Manfred H. M. van Dulmen has accepted our invitation to join UMBC as provost and senior vice president. Manfred, who will begin in the role in July, currently serves as senior associate provost and dean of the Graduate College at Kent State University in Ohio, where he has spent the bulk of his career. I could not be more thrilled about this appointment, and I am deeply grateful to the members of the search committee and all who participated in this critically important search. 

 

A faculty member in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Kent State since 2004 and a full professor since 2015, Manfred has excelled in academic leadership at all levels, including as interim department chair, associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, dean of the Graduate College, and associate provost for academic affairs and senior associate provost in the Office of the Provost. In these roles, he has led strategic planning in academic affairs; led the university through the COVID-19 pandemic; and developed strategies for enhancing graduate education and for supporting student mental health at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. He is deeply committed to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, centering these principles in all his work.

 

Like UMBC, Kent State is a public Research 1 institution that values the combination of student success and research excellence. Manfred's own record as a faculty member and an administrator demonstrates his understanding of faculty excellence as the integration of teaching, research, and service. 

 

In coming to know UMBC, he cited such integration--that teaching, research, and service go hand-in-hand here--as a standout quality. And he said UMBC's long-demonstrated interest in innovating and setting the course for where higher education needs to go spoke to him and contributed greatly to his enthusiasm for joining UMBC. He is particularly excited about working with the UMBC community to articulate and advance our strategic priorities for the future. 

 

As a first-generation college student and a first-generation immigrant to the U.S. who attended graduate school in America, Manfred is passionate about the transformative power of higher education and about its public mission in service of students and society broadly. 

 

From the first time I met him, his commitment to students, his care for people with whom he worked, his humility, and his drive for mission-driven excellence were clear, as was his desire to be at UMBC. The alignment of UMBC's values with his own, along with the opportunity to help set the course for UMBC's future, made this role--in this community, at this moment--uniquely appealing to him.

 

"It is a tremendous opportunity and privilege to be chosen to serve in this role, to build on the incredible history and legacy of the institution to further its excellence and its role as a national leader in higher education," he said. 

 

At Kent State, Manfred has helped to enhance and promote research strength across all disciplines. His own research is interdisciplinary in nature--his research interests include adolescent and young adult relationships and experiences, externalizing behavior problems and aggression, and measurement and methodology--and he has led efforts resulting in new collaborative degree programs in data science and cybersecurity, as well as in innovative micro-credential programs at Kent State. 

 

An award-winning scholar, he has received more than $6.5 million in research funding, published more than 100 articles and book chapters, and edited or co-edited three books. Manfred founded and served as editor-in-chief of the Sage Publications Journal Emerging Adulthood. Before joining Kent State as an assistant professor in 2004, Manfred was a research associate at the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota, where he earned his Ph.D. in family social science. He holds a doctorandus (the equivalent of a master's degree in the U.S.) in clinical child and adolescent psychology from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. 

 

My sincere gratitude to the search committee, led by music Professor Linda Dusman, for its dedication and outstanding work that has led us to this terrific result. Please join me in thanking them and in extending a warm UMBC welcome to Manfred!

 

Sincerely,