Dr. Mark P. Becker
Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs & Provost
Dr. Mark P. Becker was appointed Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost at the University of South Carolina on September 1, 2004. He is responsible for leading the formulation and implementation of academic policy, including coordinating the University's teaching, research, and public service programs; supervision of the allocation of resources in all academic and academic support areas; formulation and implementation of policy with respect to academic employment, promotion, tenure, and faculty development; and representation of the University before external bodies.
A key initiative overseen by Dr. Becker's office is the University's Faculty Excellence Initiative, a strategically focused faculty expansion program that will add more than 150 new tenured and tenure-track faculty lines in areas that will advance the institution as a recognized leader in education and research. This program complements the University's Centenary Professor program to increase the ranks of the research faculty, and the State-supported Centers of Economic Excellence endowed chairs program to stimulate an ambitious pace of hiring that has transformed the University of South Carolina to an institution that is categorized as "Very High Research," the highest designation, by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
Dr. Becker received his BS in Mathematics (Magna Cum Laude) from Towson State University in Maryland and his PhD in Statistics from The Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Becker was formerly dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota and associate dean for academic affairs and professor of biostatistics at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.
Dr. Becker was elected a fellow of the American Statistical Association in 1999 and has been the principal investigator on research grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. He has published extensively in leading journals, and his doctoral students have gone on to successful careers in leading higher education institutions and with multinational companies. Dr. Becker has served on a number of editorial boards, was co-editor of Sociological Methodology (2000, Blackwell Publishing), and has been a guest editor for Sociological Methods and Research and for the Journal of the American Statistical Association.
Dr. Becker has served on and chaired numerous committees for universities, professional associations, government agencies, and foundations.
