Sally Marshall
UCSF Professor Sally J. Marshall, PhD, has been appointed Associate Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs, a key position that involves working to improve the quality of life for faculty.
Marshall has a stellar record of scholarly achievement and has served the UCSF community in several roles over the past 17 years. She is a professor in the UCSF School of Dentistry's Department of Preventive and Restorative Dental Sciences, where she was Vice Chair for Research in the department until her new appointment.
In her new role, Marshall will be responsible for all academic personnel actions, including appointments, promotions and merit increases. She will also coordinate the review of academic plans for the four professional schools and the Graduate Division. Besides these traditional academic affairs responsibilities, Marshall will serve as the point person for creating, implementing, and ensuring the success of programs to enhance faculty life, and will direct the newly established Office of Faculty Development and Advancement.
"The main goals of the Office of Faculty Development and Advancement are to help faculty succeed at UCSF and to be happy or at least content in their UCSF faculty roles," Marshall says. "We will be carrying out the recommendations of the Chancellor's Council on Faculty Life. The first three items are a faculty mentoring program, a faculty welcoming program and a faculty leadership program."
Marshall is fully aware of the issues faculty, particularly women, face at UCSF. She has played a role in efforts to improve quality of life at UCSF, having chaired the Chancellor's Advisory Committee on the Status of Women and served on the committee to assess the climate for faculty at UCSF. She also has a long history of mentoring faculty in the School of Dentistry, particularly in her role as Vice Chair for Research in her department where she received praise for assisting faculty in becoming independent investigators.
Marshall assumed her post, reporting to Executive Vice Chancellor Eugene Washington, on March 18.
"Professor Marshall is assuming this key leadership role at a critical time in the life of UCSF," Washington says. "I agree with the search committee's assessment that her talent and commitment amply qualify her to contribute significantly to making UCSF an even more remarkable place for faculty. I look forward to working with Sally and ask that you give her your enthusiastic support as she assumes this important post."
Asked what ideas she has for improving the quality of life for faculty, Marshall says her first priority is to begin to implement recommendations of the Chancellor's Council on Faculty Life (CCFL). In a 170-page report issued in February 2003, the CCFL made 10 recommendations, including those calling for institutional welcoming of new faculty, departmental mentoring and cultivating leadership. See the
entire report here.
Many highly qualified people with great ideas have contributed to the CCFL and the task force and committees that led to its creation, so that has to come first," Marshall says. "I personally believe that the faculty mentoring program will naturally lead to a faculty development program, which also is a high priority for me. From my experience as a faculty member, I think we need to strive to remove the obstacles for faculty, so faculty can conduct their teaching, research, clinical activities and service."
One of the obstacles for working parents, both faculty and staff, has been addressed in part by the adoption of flexible work schedules. More recently UC has unveiled proposals to further improve its family friendly policies for academic personnel, including defining that performance reviews that are deferred due to a faculty member's family obligations shall be evaluated without prejudice.
Marshall has benefited from such family friendly policies at UCSF. "When my children were younger I felt that the time flexibility inherent in being a faculty member was very important in allowing me to be a part of my children's lives," she says. "My husband, Grayson Marshall, and I work together and we felt we had a pretty good balance, but since my children have rejected the idea of being scientists, based at least partly from watching our lifestyle, maybe it was not as good a balance as we thought. Since our children are both in college, our career efforts have expanded to fill the extra time."
Marshall brings superb knowledge, skills and experience related to all aspects of the Associate Vice Chancellor, Academic Affairs position. She has clearly demonstrated her ability to handle complex faculty issues while serving on several Academic Senate committees, including Chair of the Academic Senate Committee on Academic Personnel and Chair of the Academic Senate Committee on Research, according to Washington.
Marshall's research is in biomaterials, with an emphasis on structure-property relationships in calcified tissues, especially teeth, and novel implant materials. She has been the principal investigator of an NIH program project grant for 14 years on dentin characterization and modification. Marshall plans to maintain her research in the School of Dentistry. "Keeping my research program active is a very important part of my continuing career at UCSF," she says.
Marshall has been elected president of three major professional societies, including the International Association for Dental Research. She earned a BS in Science Engineering in 1970 from Northwestern University, where she earned a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering five years later.
Source: Lisa Cisneros
