Stricker to join Provost's Office

Stricker

The director of the cognition and instructional technologies laboratory at Texas A&M University has been named to fill the newly created position of associate provost for innovative technology, Provost Thomas G. Burish announced recently.

Andrew G. Stricker will be responsible for working with faculty to create strategies for using technology to enhance teaching and research, identify classroom infrastructure needs in regards to technology, and help the University evaluate the need for online educational programs and, if appropriate, help implement such programs.

"Andy Stricker is an experienced leader, manager, team player and consultant in the area of information technology. He has a skilled and energetic commitment to enabling others to use technological advances to improve their teaching and research," said Burish. "He involves students as well as faculty and staff in his work, has received high marks from each constituency for his approach and creativity, and has been enormously successful in obtaining outside funding to support the startup costs of many initiatives. We are looking forward to his replicating and extending these efforts at Vanderbilt."

Stricker will also report to Dr. William W. Stead, assistant to the Chancellor for informatics and chief information architect for the University.

"Andy will be a spark to our efforts to understand how the University might optimally meet its missions in a technology-enabled world," said Stead. "He brings an entrepreneurial spirit and a facilitative style that will fit well with our decentralized structure."

Stricker, a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserve, earned a bachelor of science in psychology from the University of Evansville (Indiana) in 1979, and a master's degree in psychology from Eastern New Mexico University in 1982. After serving as chief of research for the U.S. Air Force Occupational Measurement Center at Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, from 1982 to 1985, Stricker pursued a Ph.D. in educational psychology, which he earned from Texas A&M University in 1988. He taught as an adjunct professor at the University of Denver from 1988 to 1992, and an associate professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy from 1987 to 1993. From 1993 to 1995, he was deputy director of education and research at Air University, Air Force Quality Institute in Montgomery, Ala., and undertook post-graduate studies in ethics and psychology at Yale University from 1995 to 1996. From 1996 to 1997, he was a senior associate at Booz-Allen and Hamilton, Inc., in McLean, Va., and Lexington Park, Md.

Since 1997, Stricker has been director of the cognition and instructional technologies laboratory at Texas A&M. He has also taught graduate-level courses in the doctoral and master's programs of the department of educational psychology. He directed the project that established the first online degree for the university, and is also a lieutenant colonel and scientist at the Air Force Office of Scientific Research in Washington, D.C.

Burish commended the work of the search committee, which was chaired by Kenneth F. Galloway, dean of the School of Engineering.

"The search committee, ably led by Dean Ken Galloway, identified talented individuals from academia and beyond, carefully evaluated their skills and potential, and successfully recruited them to Vanderbilt," said Burish. "This was a time-consuming and difficult search, but a most successful one, thanks in large part to the special efforts to the search committee."

Stricker is scheduled to begin at Vanderbilt Aug. 1.