Career
In addition to the University of Pittsburgh, O'Connor has held executive positions at UCLA, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Smithsonian Institution, and the University of Maryland, College Park.
A biologist, O'Connor was on the faculty at UCLA, serving as Dean of the Life Sciences for six years and Chair of the Department of Biology for two years. At the University of North Carolina he was Vice Chancellor of Research and Graduate Studies and Dean of the Graduate School before being appointed Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs, and Provost in 1988.
He became Chancellor at Pitt in 1991, following the retirement of Wesley Posvar. However, he resigned in 1995, after a series of disputes with the Board of Trustees.
O'Connor joined the Smithsonian Institution in December 1995 as the Institution's first Provost. He was responsible for planning, integration and oversight of research, exhibitions, and education for the 16 museums and galleries and 6 research centers.
In 2002 the University of Maryland, College Park named him Vice President for Research and Dean of the Graduate School. He resigned this post effective July 1, 2004, and assumed the position of professor in the Department of Biology. According to the Diamondback, the University of Maryland newspaper, O'Connor was deemed responsible for overallocating graduate student fellowships, an error creating a domino effect that has left the graduate school in a multimillion dollar deficit.
Read more about this topic: J. Dennis O'Connor
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“Like the old soldier of the ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Goodbye.”
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“Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)