Dr. Thomas E. Brady will be recommended to the UT Board of Trustees to assume the position of interim dean of the Judith Herb College of Education Monday, June 22, University officials said Friday.

If approved at the meeting, Brady, a former member of the board of trustees for the Medical University of Ohio and UT, will assume his new role beginning Aug. 1. His term will run until July 31, 2010, or until a national search process has been completed and a permanent dean selected, according to his letter of appointment.

“Tom Brady joins the Judith Herb College of Education at a critical time,” said Dr. Rosemary Haggett, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs. “Tom’s experience as a leader and an entrepreneur will be critical to the college’s success as new instructional technologies and higher student expectations force colleges and universities across the nation to adapt as the world changes around us.”

Brady said one of his most important jobs when he assumes his new role will be to listen.

“I’m incredibly excited by this challenge and honored to have been asked to serve,” Brady said. “This is a college full of brilliant thinkers and powerful minds, and I see my role as helping bring good ideas together, helping secure needed resources to ensure faculty and student success, and, ultimately, ensuring the next generation of teachers is prepared to educate students in a technological environment very different from the one that exists today.”

Brady is chairman, CEO and founder of Plastic Technologies Inc. He earned his PhD from the University of Michigan and his master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Dartmouth College.

Haggett also emphasized the strides the Judith Herb College of Education had taken under retiring dean, Dr. Thomas Switzer.

“From overseeing the capital improvements to Gillham Hall, to helping form a relationship with Judith Herb and her family, to harnessing the efforts of the college to a learning-focused pedagogy, the UT community and teachers and students all over the country owe Tom Switzer tremendous thanks for his lifelong contribution to education and for his leadership at The University of Toledo,” Haggett said.

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