Dear Colleagues,
I write to inform you that Mary Holz-Clause, who has served as our Vice President for Economic Development since 2011, recently informed me that she intends to return to the faculty as of April 30, 2014. Her faculty appointment is in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources and she will serve as college’s Assistant Dean and Director of Global Programs.
I would like to thank Mary for her service to UConn, including successfully securing millions in outside grant funding, which helped create, among other things, the Connecticut Small Business Development Center (SBDC) housed here at the university.
The position of Vice President for Economic Development was created two and one half years ago because the university needed a leader who would – for the first time – assess, refine and organize what were then several disparate, but important, economic development programs at UConn. Mary played the pivotal role in evaluating our existing programs and bringing these different efforts together so that they could become a far more coordinated, robust and focused operation in the future.
With that substantial foundational work in this area now largely completed, Mary expressed her desire to return to her academic discipline. We agree that this is the right time to transfer the responsibility for this critical mission to the leaders who must build on that work and drive our economic development efforts forward on behalf of UConn and Connecticut’s economy.
To accomplish that, going forward, the major components of this portfolio will be assigned to Provost Mun Choi and Vice President for Research Jeffrey Seemann. They will oversee the development of the UConn Technology Park, our commercialization efforts, UConn Ventures, and UConn’s Technology Incubation Program.
Over the coming weeks, Mun and Jeff will meet with the employees associated with these and other programs that operate under the umbrella of economic development.
I do not foresee an immediate need for a search for a new Vice President, given the excellent work of other senior leaders, deans, department chairs, center directors, and senior faculty that is now underway, as well as new external partners who have begun to work with UConn in recent months. They include General Electric, United Technologies Corporation, Pratt & Whitney and Fraunhofer USA Inc., among others, who have all made major investments in UConn and our state’s future. These partnerships are among the first of many that we will forge in the years ahead.
Please join me in wishing Mary all the best and in looking forward to the work ahead.
Sincerely,
Susan Herbst
President
University of Connecticut
For more information, contact: Michael Kirk at michael.kirk@uconn.edu.