Matthew R. Auer becomes vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty at Bates on July 1. Photograph by Kendall Reeves.

Bates President A. Clayton Spencer announced today that Matthew R. Auer will become dean of the faculty and vice president of academic affairs, effective July 1.

Auer, dean of the Hutton Honors College and professor of public and environmental affairs at Indiana University, succeeds Pamela J. Baker ’69, Helen A. Papaioanou Professor of Biological Sciences and longtime faculty leader at Bates.

“Matthew Auer is a leading scholar and globally engaged expert in the arenas of environmental policy, energy policy, sustainable development and foreign aid,” Spencer said, in announcing the appointment. “He is also a dynamic and effective academic leader who has focused his energies on improving programs for undergraduates at Indiana University, first as director of undergraduate programs in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, and for the past five years as dean of the Hutton Honors College. I am so pleased that we have found a scholar, teacher and collaborative leader of Matt’s stature to lead our faculty in this time of great challenge and promise in higher education.”

“The curriculum’s academic rigor is legendary and its action-oriented, self-reflective approach to experiential learning is path-breaking,” Auer said.

“I am thrilled and honored to join Bates,” said Auer. “Bates has been on my radar screen for years. The faculty of talented teacher-scholars is dedicated to the personal and intellectual development of the college’s diverse student population. The curriculum’s academic rigor is legendary and its action-oriented, self-reflective approach to experiential learning is path-breaking. Bates’ faculty enters a period of major generational renewal in the short years ahead even as higher education is transformed by new technological, pedagogical and curricular innovations. It’s an exciting time to lead the faculty, and I can’t wait to get to work.”

Auer has authored or co-authored more than 50 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on environmental policy. His paper, “Communication and Competition in Environmental Studies,” published in Policy Sciences in 2010, earned the Harold D. Lasswell award for best article in that journal. His edited 2004 volume Restoring Cursed Earth: Appraising Environmental Policy Reforms in Eastern Europe and Russia was nominated for the International Studies Association’s Sprout Award for best book in global environmental studies. Auer has taught since 1996 at Indiana University, where he has earned numerous teaching awards, including IU’s highest honor for instruction, the President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Auer has served in a variety of public policy roles at national and international levels. He was senior adviser to the U.S. Forest Service from 2001 to 2006, and during that time was a member of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Forum on Forests and to the International Tropical Timber Council. For more than 20 years he has developed, implemented and evaluated energy and environmental aid programs for the U.S. Agency for International Development and for foreign aid agencies in, among other countries, Mexico, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Estonia, Poland, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand.

Auer has raised academic standards in the honors college and aligned the college’s course offerings with the university’s revamped general education requirements.

At Indiana University’s Hutton Honors College, which offers a rigorous academic experience for undergraduates within the larger research university, Auer leads a staff of 19 professionals. He is the college’s principal recruiter of faculty who teach hundreds of honors courses in various units at IU. He has raised academic standards in the honors college and aligned the college’s course offerings with the university’s revamped general education requirements. Auer has also raised resources for study abroad programs and helped develop an undergraduate research scholarship program at IU.

Auer received a doctorate in forestry and environmental studies from Yale University in 1996. His other academic degrees include an M.S. (1994) and M.Phil. (1993) from Yale, a master’s from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University (1990) and an A.B. magna cum laude in anthropology from Harvard University (1988).

Auer’s appointment culminates a national search carried out by a search advisory committee composed of faculty, staff and the president. The search included visits to campus by finalists, who spoke in large forums and small meetings about their research interests, administrative experience and vision. Auer’s visit received an overwhelmingly positive response from the Bates community.

“I am grateful to Pam Baker for her leadership of the Bates faculty and her partnership during my first year at Bates,” said Spencer. “I am also grateful to the faculty and staff who worked with such dedication on this search, and whose vision for the college has led us to this outstanding appointment.”

Auer will come to Bates with his wife Anne and their 12-year-old twins.

A national foundation that supports liberal arts education has awarded nearly $150,000 to Bates and Bowdoin colleges for a collaborative effort to strengthen students’ quantitative reasoning skills.

The New York-based Teagle Foundation has granted the colleges $148,780 for a three-year project exploring effective ways to teach quantitative reasoning. The foundation’s Systematic Improvement in Student Learning initiative will support the schools’ efforts to develop techniques for assessing students’ progress in such reasoning. It’s hoped that these assessments will provide a basis for developing best practices in curriculum and teaching techniques.

“Quantitative reasoning” refers to the application of quantitative skills, such as computation, in the interpretation of ideas and the formation of arguments in any subject. Effective quantitative reasoning requires the development of such mental habits as thinking logically and basing decisions upon evidence.

“We live in a technologically driven society, and students must be able to reason quantitatively in order to participate fully in that society,” says Matt Côté, who is coordinating the project for Bates College. Côté is an associate professor of chemistry and associate dean of the faculty.

“Much of a liberal arts education is about thinking well, reasoning well and presenting an argument. In many contexts quantitative reasoning is central to those processes.”

The two colleges plan to measure the reasoning skills of students at three points in their academic careers: upon arrival as first-year students, near the completion of their first quantitative reasoning course and just prior to graduation. At each stage, a combination of quantitative and qualitative tools will be used to gauge students’ skills and their effectiveness in applying those skills when reasoning from evidence.

These assessments will give Bates and Bowdoin the data and the insights necessary to improve how such reasoning is taught, Côté explains. “We want to figure out which aspects of our efforts to enhance students’ quantitative reasoning are most effective and where there is room for improvement. Our assessment efforts will provide concrete information about what form those improvements ought to take.”

The grant comes at a crucial time for both schools, says Nancy Jennings, chair of Bowdoin’s education department. “We’ve already done preliminary work in making a transition in our general education requirements from a focus on quantitative skills to quantitative reasoning,” says Jennings.

“Faculty who teach quantitative reasoning courses have had some discussions about what the new focus includes and what our aims are, but we haven’t had the time or resources to thoughtfully and systematically put all the pieces together yet, especially the assessment piece. That we can now do this thoughtful, systematic work collaboratively with colleagues from Bates just means the discussions and outcomes will be that much richer.”

The Teagle support will also advance the colleges’ participation in the regional New England Consortium on Assessment and Student Learning initiative and, more broadly, enable Bowdoin and Bates to share their findings with wider national audiences.

The Teagle Foundation provides leadership for liberal education, marshalling intellectual and financial resources needed to ensure student access to challenging, wide-ranging and enriching college educations. The foundation emphasizes measurement-based approaches to educational improvements and the broad dissemination of project results. Learn more.

– Doug Hubley, Office of Communications and Media Relation

A former dean of the faculty at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., Reich was most recently executive director of education for the American Psychological Association. From 1977 to 1994, she was a faculty member, department chair and associate graduate dean at Loyola University of Chicago. A graduate of Regis College, Reich received her Ph.D in experimental psychology from Dartmouth.

“As a scholar and teacher, her achievements are profound,” Harward said. “She has championed scholarship and teaching excellence within arenas of professional disciplines and in interdisciplinary contexts. We look forward to her leadership at Bates.”

The challenge of the academic vice president, Reich said, “is to foster the scholarly and teaching expertise of the faculty, while recognizing the times in which we live. These times demand a grounding in the liberal arts and sciences, shaped within a context that enhances applications to the community and the rapidly changing global marketplace.”

Reich said she looks forward to “my opportunity to help advance a liberal education of excellence, one that prepares its graduates to engage in the intellectual, economic, scientific, ethical and social challenges of the global community in which they live and for which many will serve as leaders.”