Dr. Dan Ferguson

Dr. Richard Pullen

Dr. Kathryn Wetzel

Sept. 5, 2014

The academic landscape is swiftly evolving at Amarillo College under the leadership of new President Russell Lowery-Hart.

The AC Board of Regents appointed Lowery-Hart to the presidency on Aug. 26 and already the College has announced two major academic reconfigurations and named three new deans.

All the announcements were made by Jerry Moller, longtime dean of arts and sciences, who is serving as acting vice president of academic affairs, filling the void created in August when Lowery-Hart ascended from that post to become president.

Ironically, Moller’s first announcement was that his own Arts and Sciences Division has been effectively eliminated. The ungainly division has been replaced by the creation of two more-manageable divisions—the Liberal Arts Division under the deanship of Dr. Dan Ferguson, and the STEM (Sciences, Technology, Engineering and Math) Division, with Dr. Kathy Wetzel serving as the inaugural dean.

Both Ferguson and Wetzel had previously served as assistant deans within the now-defunct Arts and Sciences Division.

“I’m honored and excited, and I look forward to working with all members of the faculty to help them reach their goals and realize their dreams,” Wetzel said. “If I can help them meet their goals as faculty, it will go a long way toward helping our students meet their goals.”

Ferguson said the new Liberal Arts Division is well stocked with exceptional people. “I feel so fortunate to be surrounded by talented, passionate, hard-working individuals,” he said. “I am honored and humbled to lead a great team that I know will accomplish fantastic things for AC and its students.”

Nursing was equally impacted amid the academic transformation. The newly created Division of Nursing becomes the umbrella for both the LVN (Licensed Vocational Nursing) Program and the ADN (Associate Degree of Nursing) Program, each of which had previously been numbered among programs in AC’s Health Sciences Division.

Dr. Richard Pullen, a 2009 Piper Professor who since February has served as interim director of the ADN Program, has been selected to serve as the new Division’s dean.

“I’m extremely grateful to be placed in a position where I can continue to help guide and mentor faculty,” Pullen said. “The Nursing Division’s new structure brings the LVN and ADN programs together in a way that we can celebrate each other’s uniqueness and, ultimately, better serve our students, and serving students and this community is my number one goal.”

Moller said the Arts and Sciences Division had long since become too large and too widespread to be overseen by a single individual. Meanwhile, he said, the nursing programs had grown to a size that compelled dean-level oversight, someone able to focus on the litany of issues and challenges specific to nursing education.

“This has been a well-thought-out process and all the changes that have occurred have been under serious consideration for a very long time,” Moller said. “We decided to implement these changes all at once rather than incrementally so as to establish consistency and stability within the programs being affected.

“Programs need to be manageable from the top down to ensure student success, which is our top priority at the College. We’re especially pleased that the new deans we have in place have long been dedicated and staunch advocates of student success at AC, not only in their own areas of expertise, but in student-success efforts throughout the College.

“By making these changes now,” Moller said, “we’ve ensured that whoever becomes our next vice president of academic affairs will be able to hit the ground running and not be faced with issues of reorganization and personnel matters.”

Moller, who plans to retire once a new vice president is in place, said a national search for that individual is presently being planned and will commence in the very near future.