Dr. Robert A. Frank, Dean of the Ohio University College of Arts & Sciences, announces Dr. Brian C. McCarthy ’84MS as Associate Dean for Faculty, Graduate Studies and Research, effective Sept. 1.
McCarthy, Professor of Forest Ecology, has served as Chair of the Department of Environmental and Plant Biology since 2010 and joined the Ohio University faculty in 1992. He served as Interim Associate Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences in 2011-12.
“I am very pleased that Professor McCarthy has agreed to serve as associate dean,” says Frank. “He has the background and skills to make significant contributions to the success of our faculty and students, and I look forward to working with Brian more closely now that he has joined the Dean’s staff.”
McCarthy is an Ohio University alum, earning an M.S. in Botany in 1984. After earning a Ph.D. in Ecology in 1989 from Rutgers University, McCarthy taught at Frostburg State University and the Appalachian Environmental Laboratory in the Center for Environmental and Estuarine Studies at the University of Maryland. He earned a B.S. in Biology from Saint Peter’s College.
In his role as Associate Dean in the College of Arts & Sciences, McCarthy will oversee faculty development programs and the promotion and tenure process. His management of the graduate program includes the graduate student budget and policies and procedures related to graduate admissions, theses, and dissertations. He also will champion research by college faculty and students and manage research support and incentive funds.
McCarthy is a prominent researcher and scholar in forest ecology. His research has focused largely on regional mixed oak forests with an emphasis on understanding stand-level disturbances and prescribed fire effects on forest regeneration, as well as the effects of invasive species and ecology of the forest herb community. More recently, he has turned his attention the restoration of the American chestnut and mine-land reclamation. Among his many accomplishments, he is a Fellow of the Ohio Academy of Science and the Editor-In-Chief of the Journal of the Torrey Botanical Society. He serves on several other editorial boards and has received career service awards from the American Chestnut Foundation and the Ohio Biological Survey. He is a Certified Senior Ecologist with the Ecological Society of America and Director of the Dysart Woods Research Laboratory. He received the Outstanding Faculty Leadership and Service Award from the College of Arts & Sciences in 2011.
McCarthy has been a principle investigator or co-investigator on more than 75 grant-funded projects since 1983, with resources from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Department of the Interior, and the U.S. Department of Energy. He has authored or co-authored more than 110 peer-reviewed articles and supervised in excess of 45 graduate students.
“I am quite pleased to be chosen to serve as Associate Dean for Faculty, Graduate Studies, and Research,” says McCarthy, who indicated that he looked forward to his new position and related responsibilities. “Faculty scholarship and graduate education have been of great interest to me my entire career. Ohio University has a splendid faculty and many exceptional graduate students. The quality and quantity of scholarship that occurs here continually impresses me. I consider it an honor to be able to assist and facilitate that scholarship any way I can.”
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