CAMBRIDGE, Mass., May 11 -- MIT President Charles M. Vest has announced the appointment of Professor of Physics Robert P. Redwine, director of MIT's famed Laboratory for Nuclear Science, as Dean of Undergraduate Education. The appointment is effective in July when Dean Rosalind Williams steps down after five years.
Redwine, of Winchester, Mass., has been a member of the MIT faculty for 20 years and head of the Laboratory for Nuclear Science for the past eight years.
Dr. Vest said, "It is a privilege to announce the appointment of Professor Robert P. Redwine as Dean of Undergraduate Education, effective in July. Bob has been a very effective director of the Laboratory for Nuclear Science, and now has expressed great enthusiasm for turning his energies and attention to the quality of our undergraduates' academic experience. He is a distinguished scientist and administrator, whose open, interactive style is ideal for this deanship. He will be a highly effective voice on behalf of undergraduates on the Academic Council."
Chancellor Bacow said, "Bob Redwine will make a fabulous dean. Prior to assuming the directorship of the Laboratory for Nuclear Science, he taught 8.01 [Physics I], and played a leadership role in physics undergraduate education. A distinguished scientist and a wonderful educator, he will be a powerful and articulate voice for undergraduate education at MIT." Both the dean for undergraduate education and the dean for student life will report to the chancellor under a new structure announced January 26.
Elizabeth Sharp, a junior in biology and a member of the eight-person chancellor's advisory committee on the search, said Redwine "shows a genuine desire to reach out to all the communities of MIT. I'm sure he will be a wonderful dean who will truly listen to and take into consideration the concerns of students."
TALENTED STUDENTS
"It is very exciting," Dr. Redwine said Monday about his new job. "For me, one of the main attractions of being a faculty member at MIT is the extraordinarily talented group of students who come to MIT. The opportunity to direct the Laboratory for Nuclear Science was a wonderful one, and the laboratory continues to be a world-leading center for high energy and nuclear physics.
"The chance to play an important role in shaping the undergraduate educational experience at a leading and unique institution such as MIT simply proved irresistible."
Redwine completed his BA in 1969 at Cornell and his PhD in 1973 at Northwestern. He held positions at the University of Berne, Switzerland, and at the Los Alamos National Laboratory before becoming a member of the MIT faculty in 1979.
Professor Redwine has been involved in a variety of important experiments in intermediate energy physics, spanning weak, electromagnetic, and strong interaction physics.
He and his group are currently involved in two major projects. The HERMES Experiment at the DESY Laboratory in Hamburg, Germany, is studying the spin structure of protons and neutrons. The other major project is the BLAST detector for internal target studies for nucleon and few-nucleon systems, conducted at the Bates Linear Accelerator in Middleton, Mass., a national Department of Energy facility operated by the MIT Laboratory for Nuclear Science .
Professor Redwine has served on many national and international physics advisory committees and is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Professor Redwine's wife is Professor Jacqueline N. Hewitt of the Department of Physics. They live in Winchester with their two sons.
