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.
Be the first to comment