Professor retires after 40 years

Teaching the children of the first generation of students he taught at Temple was a different experience for Thaddeus Mathis.

The professor of political science and social administration came to Temple in the midst of the civil rights movement and retired as a professor emeritus Dec. 31, 2008, after nearly four decades.

“I really enjoyed working with students and the challenges they face. This generation has been different,” Mathis said. “These are the children of the students that I first started teaching so they face a different set of challenges.”

He began teaching at the university in August 1970 as an adjunct political science professor. Before his days at Temple, he worked as a planner with the Model Cities Program, combating urban violence and poverty.

“[I came to Temple] before students really had access to some of the programs they have now. This was a period of tremendous social movement and changes,” he said. “Temple was a part of those efforts as well, having everybody really energized and engaged, trying to make the country, university and the city better places.”

He earned a Ph.D. in political science and a master’s in African American studies from Temple. He also has degrees in social service and secondary education from other schools.

Mathis also joined the School of Social Administration in 1970. He said he will participate in the school’s 40th anniversary celebration.

But Mathis’ résumé doesn’t end there.

He began the Institute of Africana Social Work in 1991 to educate social workers in helping African-American families and also served as the associate dean of Social Administration for four years during the 1990s.

His tentative plans for the future include continuing his activism for the black community by working on projects he helped spark. He serves as chair of the Black Political Convention and as a national officer for the National Black Independence Political Party.

“Helping prepare leadership at the neighborhood level is what we do [at the Philadelphia Community Institute for Africana Studies],” Mathis said of the organization, where he serves as a board member.
Mathis said he would still like to return as an adjunct professor and keep his connections with Temple alive.

“I hope [I] can continue and get more involved in the community around Temple,” he said. “And I certainly hope they continue to allow students to come and get a good education.”

Arty Kern can be reached at arthur.kern@temple.edu.

Ronald T. Brown: named interim dean of dentistry school

Ronald. T. Brown has been named interim dean of the Kornberg School of Dentistry, starting May 1, according to a university press release.

Brown is dean of Temple’s College of Health Professions and a professor of public health. He is a pediatric psychologist who specializes in chronic illnesses and learning disabilities that affect children and adolescents.

The academic has been awarded more than $10 million in research funding through his career to study various issues in his field, including the oral health of black adolescents who have diabetes and learning impairments of survivors of childhood cancer.

Brown will continue to fill his role as dean of the College of Health Professions during the national search for a replacement for Martin F. Tansy.

In October, Tansy announced his intentions to resign. He first planned to leave June 30. A university was unavailable to immediately explain why an interim dean is needed May 1. Tansy, who first became dean in 1987 after one year as acting dean, plans to return to full-time teaching, another university release said. He has been a Temple faculty member for 45 years and will return to the university’s Department of Periodontology and Oral Implantology.

Brown had also been chairing the search advisory committee to replace Tansy. Deputy Provost Richard Englert will replace him. For more information on the search, see www.temple.edu/provost/dentistrydeansearch.

Christopher Wink can be reached at cwink@temple.edu.

New law school dean named: Epps to replace Reinstein

JoAnne A. Epps has been named the next dean of Temple’s Beasley School of Law, effective July 1.

The former associate dean will replace Robert J. Reinstein who will end his 19-year tenure when he steps down on Monday, June 30, hoping to return to teaching, according to a university release.

Epps, who specializes in trial advocacy and criminal procedure, will take over the law school, which boasts 64 faculty members, more than 1,200 students at Main Campus and more than 100 in the university’s law programs in Beijing and Tokyo.

She has been associate dean of academic affairs since 1989, primarily serving as a liason between Reinstein and the law faculty. She joined the law faculty in 1985, rising to full professor in 1994. Between 1980 and 1985, Epps was an assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

The first job for a 16-year-old Epps was as a cashier at Temple’s bookstore, and her mother was a Temple employee, according to the release.

Epps was the only law professor selected by the American Bar Association to travel to London to train Sudanese lawyers representing victims of the Darfur crisis. She has also taught in Temple’s law programs in Beijing.

Reinstein also served as vice president for international programs, but a replacement for that position has yet to be announced

Reinstein, the longest-serving dean among American law schools, served over expansive growth in the law school from 1989 to 2008. The law school’s endowment ballooned from $4 million to $57 million and faculty increased by 20 percent. This fall’s entering class has the highest academic record in the law school’s history, according to the release. Some 4,800 applicants, double what it was in 1989, compete for 300 roster spots.

In his role as vice president for international programs, Reinstein oversaw tremendous growth at Temple University-Japan and further developed Temple Rome into one of the top American study abroad programs. Reinstein, who joined Temple’s law faculty in 1969, served as a law professor and the university’s general counsel from 1982 to 1969. Prior to Temple, he was a contributing attorney for the NAACP and fought to integrate the Philadelphia Police and Fire departments, and other groups.

Christopher Wink can be reached at cwink@temple.edu

Diane Bryen leaving Institute on Disabilities

Diane Nelson Bryen will leave her post as executive director of Temple’s Institute on Disabilities in June after more than 15 years in the role, the university announced earlier this week.

She will be replaced by David T. Mitchell, formerly the first permanent director of the Ph.D. in Disability Studies at the University of Illinois-Chicago, the only one of its kind in the United States. Bryen first came to Temple in 1964 and first left with a masters degree in special education and a Ph.D. in educational psychology, a university release said.

She first taught at Temple, too, beginning as a special education professor in 1973. It wasn’t until 1991 that she was asked to lead the Institute on Disabilities. She has been at Temple since the 1960s so won’t be able to leave completely the university community, Bryen said.

Mitchell will officially take the helm on July 1. He has expressed interest in having Temple host just the second doctorate program for Disability Studies in the country, behind his former employer, and just the third in the world, also behind the University of Leeds in England, according to a university release.

His wife, Sharon Snyder, is on the faculty of the University of Illinois-Chicago. Plans for transitioning the family, with their two small children, to Philadelphia were not immediately announced.

Christopher Wink can be reached at cwink@temple.edu.

Joe Frazier’s Gym closes for renovations

Joe Frazier’s Gym, a North Philadelphia landmark at 2917 N. Broad St. above Glenwood Avenue for more than 40 years, has been closed for renovations.

The closure will last at least three months, said Leslie Wolff, Joe Frazier’s business manager.

“The building is at least a century old,” Wolff said. “It’s easier to close down, clean out what could politely be called junk, and see what kind of renovations we need.”

No exact date has been placed on the building being reopened, but the hope is three months from now, Wolff said. Currently contractors are evaluating the historic building, which was a dance hall before Frazier made it a gym in 1969.

There were fears of the gym permanent closing, including a falsified press release originally used by the popular blog Philebrity.com and The Temple News. It didn’t come from Joe Frazier’s Gym, said Wolff, who quickly dispelled the rumor.

“There will always be a Joe Frazier’s Gym,” he said.

Frazier, the former heavyweight champion of the world and longtime rival of Muhammad Ali, lived in a small apartment above the gym, while he toured throughout the country, but has since made a permanent home elsewhere in the region, Wolff said.

“He had been living there off and on, more off,” Wolff said. “But in the last, say, four months, he has lived elsewhere.”

The gym opened in 1969, a few years after Joe turned professional in August 1965. Joe was born the youngest of 12 children on Jan. 12, 1944 in Beaufort, S.C., but made Philadelphia his home. He won a gold medal at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, before beginning one of the most celebrated careers in boxing history, earning a 32-4-1 career record and winning 27 of his victories by knockout. His three matches against Ali in the 1970s are often considered among the best in sports history.

His son Marvis, also a former boxer, handled the daily operations of the gym, which served as much a community center and outreach program as a training facility.

“It’s not always about boxing,” Marvis told The Temple News last October. “We’re trying to change young men.”

Marvis trained at the now closed gym, also, launching his career there in 1975 and returning to serve as general manager after he retired in 1990. Despite success as an amateur, his professional boxing career was less memorable. Aside from his responsibilities at the gym, Marvis doubled as a Delaware reverend, as The Temple News reported.

“This is the ministry God has given me,” Marvis said of the gym and working with young aspiring boxers.

In retirement, the Fraziers were a draw for top young boxing talent even beyond the region. In February, British featherweight Marianne Marston moved from London to Philadelphia in order that she might train under Joe. Another top female boxer that has been forced to find a new boxing home is Diane Moses, originally from Jacksonville, Fla. Jayson Sia, mentioned in the release, moved from Los Angeles to train.

Marston is returning to London and the others have found different boxing homes, Wolff said. When the gym reopens, there are plans for it to refocus on training professional fighters.

“Joe is one of a few real scientists of the sport,” Wolff said. “Joe Frazier’s Gym can be anywhere in the world. It isn’t the building, it’s Joe.”

Christopher Wink can be reached at cwink@temple.edu.

University spokesman Mark Eyerly leaves university

Mark Eyerly, Temple’s chief communications officer, has left the university. Yesterday was his last day, university spokesman Ray Betzner said.“I am no longer with Temple University,” the greeting on Eyerly’s voice mail simply stated today. He wasn’t reached for comment today.

Administrators below the level of vice president most often don’t have official announcements from the university on their departure, Betzner said.

Eyerly accepted a position with the law school of the University of Pennsylvania. He will start there Feb. 11.

Christopher Wink can be reached at cwink@temple.edu.

Campus unknown named next dean of Japan campus

Bruce Stronach was named the next dean of Temple University-Japan on Jan. 10, to replace the retiring dean, Kirk R. Patterson. Stronach will officially join TUJ on Feb. 1 but will not assume the role of dean until April 1.An interim dean has not been named.Currently, Stronach, a campus outsider with an academic career that spans three decades and two continents, is transitioning from his term as president of Yokohama City University, where he has been since 2004.”I am very happy to have been selected as dean,” wrote Stronach in an email from Japan. “I am very much looking forward to working with everyone on the Temple team in Philadelphia, Tokyo, and elsewhere around the world.”Stronach is accomplished, having been the first foreign president of a Japanese public university when he was first hired as president of YCU, a mid-sized school of 4,500 in a city of 3.5 million some 20 miles south of Tokyo.Prior to that appointment, Stronach had been acting president at Becker College in Worcester, M.A. since 2003 and its chief operating officer before then since 1998. From 1990 to 1997, he held faculty and administrative positions at the Graduate School of International Relations at the International University of Japan in Niigata, eventually serving as the school’s dean beginning in 1994. Stronach also has held faculty appointments at Merrimack College in North Andover, M.A, and at Keio University in Tokyo.Indeed, Stronach, 57, is the accomplished academic to his former competition, 37-year-old attorney Matthew J. Wilson, TUJ’s current chief legal counsel and the only other candidate to be named a finalist by the university’s search advisory committee.Wilson had been a frequent de facto acting dean when Patterson was away on leave, most recently in the interim between Patterson’s TUJ departure Dec. 17 and Stronach’s appointment, according to some at the campus. However, some university sources said Wilson’s exact role was unclear.No official announcement regarding an interim dean was named between Patterson’s official exit Dec. 31 and Stronach’s official entrance Feb. 1. TUJ’s semester began on Jan. 14, according to Stephanie Gillin, chief of staff to University Provost Lisa Staiano-Coico, who, with President Ann Weaver Hart, made the final decision on Patterson’s successor.There had been some question to the delay in the decision to nominate Stronach, a longtime friend of Patterson’s. Official comment on the timing of the announcement has not been made.”I am just beginning to absorb all the pressures of the transition and to bring myself up to speed on matters pertaining to both the home campus and the Tokyo campus,” wrote Stronach in the same email from Saturday.He has not spoken to what, if anything, his friendship with Patterson, who was not active in the selection of his replacement, might mean for his plans and goals.Patterson, who served from 2002 to 2007 and announced his retirement on Aug. 27, will likely be remembered for a tenure highlighted by unprecedented growth, though marred with late coming criticism of his leadership style, which some suggested was too controlling. Sources, including TUJ administrators and faculty, who afforded this characterization would not speak on the record but additionally praised the fiscal successes Patterson led.”My successor will inherit an institution that is very optimistic,” wrote Patterson in an email from early December. “TUJ is becoming a first in the world model for international education.”The man Stronach beat out, Wilson, had a leading role in the Patterson administration. He noted during interviews on Main Campus in November that his direct experience with TUJ was a prize advantage in his quest to become dean.”I won’t have an on-the-job learning period,” he said while on Main Campus in November.Despite watching an outside leapfrog him for the chief spot he coveted, Wilson intoned his intentions to stay on with his role at the branch campus.”I am excited that Dr. Bruce Stronach has agreed to join the Temple family,” he wrote in an email to The Temple News from Tokyo on the day of the announcement. “[I] look forward to working with him in my capacities as Associate Dean and General Counsel.”Wilson, who is narrow, blonde and noted for his boyish features, rapidly ascended through administrative ranks during a four and a half year TUJ career.Wilson was taken on as a professor of law at TUJ in April 2003 and began what has been a startling ascension. Just two months later he was named the law program’s director. Then, a little over a year later, he was installed both as TUJ’s chief legal counsel and associate dean. Those positions, which he still holds, were coupled with a semester as director of TUJ’s undergraduate program last spring. If he had been appointed, he would have been the youngest dean in that campus’s history.But he wasn’t and, where Wilson’s rise through Temple administrative ranks has been heralded, Stronach’s youth was less direct. His first attempt at college failed.”You should be committed to your education because I wasn’t,” he told The Temple News in a November interview on Main Campus.Young Stronach grew up on a small farm in Massachusetts and first left home for Boston College in the late 1960s. The football player who got caught up in the anti-war movement struggled to find a desire for academics, so he left in 1970. The next three years of his life were spent working as a truck driver and in various manufacturing capacities.”The first half of my life was spent in factories, on trucks,” he said in the same interview. “So, I think I have a pretty good idea what the real world is like.”Stronach has two daughters, one of whom currently attends Wake Forest University, another is a student at a high school outside of Boston.In speaking with The Temple News, Stronach expressed an interest in further developing TUJ’s image as a permanent fixture of higher education in Japan and working on partnerships with other Japanese universities.”I want TUJ to become more of a Japanese institution,” he said in November, while still just a candidate for the position. “Not just the extension campus of Temple University.”Still, he admitted not knowing much about the daily operations of TUJ.”I don’t know all that much about TUJ,” he said. “But I think that is more of an asset than a deficit.”Christopher Wink can be reached at cwink@temple.edu.The Temple News originally misreported when Stronach will officially become dean. He will join TUJ on Feb. 1, but won’t become dean until April 1 as changed on Jan. 23 at 6:21 p.m.

Tyler dean retires just before transition to Main Campus

After serving as dean of the Tyler School of Art for two-and-a-half years, Keith Morrison announced his decision to step down from the position earlier this month to pursue his own projects.”I thoroughly enjoyed working at Tyler,” said Morrison, a native of Jamaica. “I loved the students and the faculty. They treated me well and I treated them well.”Art history professor Therese Dolan will serve as interim dean as Provost Lisa Staiano-Coico begins the search for someone to fill Morrison’s position.Morrison declined to comment on exactly why he made the decision to step down at such a crucial time in Tyler’s history, just one year shy of the school’s scheduled move to Main Campus.Though he was a pivotal part of the negotiations to move Tyler from Elkins Park, a suburb about seven miles north of Main Campus, Morrison will no longer be involved with the process.”I know [moving is] a very, very complicated issue, and there are factors involved,” he said. “Merging the faculty, moving the facilities, merging the student bodies, improving the space for the downtown departments – all of those things are on the table. How they will play out, I have no idea.”In addition to his contribution to the organization of Tyler’s move, during his time as dean, Morrison also hired 12 tenure-track professors, eight technicians, two budget officers and a new associate dean.”I’m very proud of my achievements at Tyler. All of that for me in two-and-a-half years is more than I imagined I could have gotten done,” he said. “Those 12 faculty members I recruited are major, and I think they raised the bar at Tyler, if not at all of Temple.”Morrison also raised the bar at the art school internationally by extending the curriculum to include South American, Asian and African art and worked to promote a more urban focus for the school.In addition to his contributions to Tyler, Morrison is also an internationally known artist. His colorful paintings have been exhibited around the world, from the Jamaica Institute of Art to the Cincinnati Art Museum.”Whenever he was talked about in art history meetings, it was always with extreme respect, friendliness and pleasantness,” said Abraham Davidson, an art history professor who worked with Morrison when he served as chair of the Collegial Assembly.”My plans now are to work on some exhibitions that I have commitments for, to curate an exhibition internationally that I have a commitment to do, and to write a significant essay that I have a commitment to do.”Morgan A. Zalot can be reached at morgan.zalot@temple.edu.

Temple professor, who brought ties to China, dies at 95

Man-Chiang Niu, who was instrumental in forging Temple’s well-developed relationship with his native China, died last month in Beijing. He was 95.

Niu, a retired Temple biology professor, died of complications from bone marrow cancer. He was a 21-year member of Temple’s faculty.

His distinguished career focused on cell research almost as much as he worked to develop scientific exchanges between China and the United States.

“The entire extended Temple family is saddened by the passing of Professor Niu,” Temple President Ann Weaver Hart said in a university press release from late last month. “His impact on international higher education, particularly here at Temple, has been felt by generations of students, and will continue to grow as Temple’s close ties with China strengthen in the future.”

Hart met with Niu at Temple’s first alumni reunion in Beijing just 10 days before he died.

Niu personally started the foundation for a relationship between China and Temple in the 1970s. Beginning in 1972, he visited with Chinese academics each summer, hoping to bring some back to Temple. Through his persistence, his goal was met when two Chinese genetic researchers were allowed to work at Temple in 1978.

Then in 1979, the opportunities grew substantially during an American visit by then-Chinese President Den Xiaoping. Temple gave Deng an honorary law degree, said the current director of the Temple-Beijing Rule of Law program, Mo Zhang, who spoke to The Temple News in early October of this year.

Niu helped arrange Deng’s honorary degree. In return, Deng invited a delegation from Temple, including Niu and former university president Marvin Wachman, to visit China later that year.Today, Temple sponsors a 15-month course on American law, housed at the prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing.

“It is the first and only program to offer a foreign law degree in China,” said Zhang, the director of the program. Niu’s dreams have largely become a reality.

Niu was born on Oct. 31, 1912, in the northern He Bei province of China, which surrounds the nation’s capital. After graduating from Beijing University, he married his wife, Lillian Paoying, in 1943, and together, they immigrated to the United States in 1944. He earned a doctorate from Stanford University and, after a stint at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York, he took a position at Temple in 1960. He retired in 1981.

In retirement, he directed a laboratory at Beijing’s Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Developmental Biology, which he founded in 1980. He kept homes both in Beijing and Elkins Park, Montgomery County, where the Tyler School of Art is currently located.

Niu is survived by his wife and two daughters, McYing Niu and Manette T. Nieu.His Nov. 16 funeral in Beijing was attended by Chinese President Hu Jintao, among others, according to the university’s press release.

Christopher Wink can be reached at cwink@temple.edu

TUJ dean retires for the sea

Kirk Patterson wants to sail the world.The current dean of Temple University Japan, who announced his retirement at a campus-wide meeting on Aug. 27, is looking beyond his departure at the end of this month.It was a dream of his from a very early age, but it wasn’t until 15 years ago that he realized he might be blessed with the opportunity to make it a reality.”I’ll spend two years in Victoria preparing,” said the native Canadian over the telephone from Tokyo. “Getting the boat ready, getting my body ready.”Perhaps, it won’t be unlike his five-year career as the top man for Temple in JapanTUJ was in fiscal ruin 2001, prior to Patterson’s appointment as dean in January 2002. The branch campus had lost money for 10 consecutive years.”TUJ’s reputation was very bad when I came,” Patterson, 54, said. “A lot of foreign universities were closing, so no one would trust them.”So Patterson was brought from the corporate world, having held leadership positions in large communications and public relations firms before being chosen to fill the campus’s top position. After reorganizing the school’s mission and welcoming encouraged commitment from Main Campus, Patterson has overseen TUJ’s transition to a successful, profitable part of a growing Temple community.After years of swirling rumors about the impending closure of TUJ, attitudes have largely changed.Temple President Ann Weaver Hart’s trip to East Asia last month, which prominently featured TUJ’s 25th anniversary celebration, was an important reminder of that.”When you’ve been in office for a long, long time and – I would hope – are happy with what you see as the future of the institution you’ve devoted so much of your life to,” Hart said, “you can feel comfortable stepping down knowing that you feel like the institution is in good hands.”"President Hart is wonderful in her commitment to global education,” said Patterson, who speaks and reads Japanese.The field of candidates to replace him as head of a growing campus has been narrowed to two.Bruce Stronach, 57, is a career academic from Massachusetts and current president of Yokohama City University. Matthew J. Wilson, 37, originally from Utah, is chief legal counsel and current Associate Dean at TUJ. The final decision is expected to be announced before the end of January.Despite an impressive turnaround, Patterson has not been without criticism. Some TUJ administrators and academic personnel have suggested that he has remained too closely involved in the daily decisions of what is still a small, albeit flourishing, university setting.During a public presentation on Main Campus, Wilson, who would be the youngest dean in TUJ history if chosen, promised to improve something Patterson has cited as one of his earliest successes: campus unity.”TUJ is a growing institution,” said Wilson while in Philadelphia Nov. 20. “But an important first stand is to reconnect with staff, to improve faculty morale.”While Temple is not required to release by-campus fiscal results, after a decade of budget shortfalls, the past four years have been profitable, according to Patterson. Enrollment at TUJ has doubled to nearly 3,000 students since Patterson came, including 20 percent increases in each of the past two academic years.”My successor will inherit an institution that is very optimistic,” said Patterson, who is not involved in the process to select his replacement. “TUJ is becoming a first in the world model for international education.”Patterson is not shy about what the position has meant to him.”If I hadn’t taken the Temple job, my life wouldn’t have been complete,” he said. “My decision was to leave Japan, not TUJ.”After the announcement of his retirement, Hart said she would recommend to the Board of Trustees that Patterson become a Dean Emeritus after his departure, so he would be available to help with any transition period, if necessary.But Patterson is certainly moving on. He has an ailing father in Spain and a dream of his own calling from the horizon, seeing the world by sea all alone.Still, he not is without plans to return to what has been his home for 25 years.”The first leg of my trip will be to sail back here,” he said with confidence in his voice. “No foreigner has ever completed a solo circumnavigation of Japan.”"I just don’t have a boat, yet,” he said.Christopher Wink can be reached at cgw@temple.edu.

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