Administrators announced Monday that Jo Rae Wright will become the next dean of the Graduate School and vice provost effective July 1.
Wright, vice dean of basic science at the Duke University School of Medicine, was selected after a committee spent several months evaluating candidates in a national search.
"I am incredibly pleased with the appointment," Provost Peter Lange said. "She's very strategic and has a great deal of knowledge about the way the Graduate School operates."
Wright will succeed Dean Lewis Siegel, who has served in the position for 15 years, pending formal approval by the University's Board of Trustees.
Lange said Wright will likely be approved.
"My heart has always been very focused on graduate education, and it's a new and exciting thing for me to think about doing," Wright said.
She noted that she will continue with her duties as vice dean in the School of Medicine before assuming the Graduate School deanship.
Her main duty in the medical school is to oversee the medicine-based programs in the Graduate School.
Wright said she does not know who will fill the vice dean position or when a successor will be chosen.
Siegel noted that Wright's work in the medical school gives her a unique perspective, as she is already aware of about a fifth of the offerings of the Graduate School.
"She views herself as a citizen of the [Graduate] School as well as the University," Siegel said. "She has been one that has done a lot of things, but graduate education is one of her passions."
Wright joins Katharine Bartlett, dean of the School of Law, and Kristina Johnson, dean of the Pratt School of Engineering, as female heads of University schools, Lange noted.
"Promoting diversity in the senior-level administration is always a good thing," he said.
Although the offer was extended to Wright before Christmas, she spent several weeks weighing if she would accept the position.
"It's been great working in the School of Medicine," she said. "I will be sad in many respects to leave it."
Wright said she is particularly interested in the strategic planning process.
Duke is currently in the process of drafting a new strategic plan, which guides the goals and priorities of the University. "It is very rare for someone to have an opportunity to take on a role like this when a strategic plan is being developed," she said. "You can leave a stamp."
One of Wright's major initiatives as dean will be promoting mentoring.
She has already set up a mentoring program as a vice dean and will continue to focus on developing faculty-student relationship in her Graduate School post.
Wright's other priorities include forwarding the University's goal of interdisciplinarity and admitting more top students. "Having women in positions of leadership as role models is great," she said, noting that Duke is generally unbiased with regard to gender.
A nationally renowned expert in lung disease, Wright studies how immune cells prevent infection and promote normal breathing.
"Students in my lab are very supportive and excited for me," she said of her new appointment. "They are willing to make it work out."
Along with the new job, officials from the American Physiological Society announced Dec. 15 that Wright will receive a lifetime achievement award for her work in the field.
"I thought they had probably made a mistake," she said. "Makes me feel I'm getting old."
Wright received her bachelor's degree in biology and Ph.D. in physiology from West Virginia University. She then went on to complete post-doctoral work at the University of California, San Francisco. Wright joined Duke as an associate professor in 1993.
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