President Mary Sue Coleman has appointed U-M-Dearborn Chancellor Daniel Little to another 5-year term beginning July 1, pending approval by the Board of Regents. Little has served in the position since 2000.
In her announcement of the reappointment to faculty and staff on the Dearborn campus, Coleman said Little has done much to enhance the University’s academic program, physical plant and reputation in the region and state.
“The future of U-M-Dearborn is bright,” Coleman wrote in a memo to the campus. “You have entered an exciting and promising phase in the life of U-M-Dearborn; Chancellor Little is the right person at the right time for the work that lies before you.”
To evaluate Little’s first term, Coleman sought input from U-M-Dearborn faculty, staff, students and alumni, and members of the community. She said during his tenure enrollment has increased, a number of new courses and programs have been established, and the campus capital campaign has reached more than half of its $35 million goal.
The campus population climbed nearly 10 percent measured by full-year equated students from 2000-01 to 2003-04, with a headcount of more than 8,600 students enrolled this year. Under Little’s leadership, the campus has embraced a plan to increase enrollment by 35 percent during the next decade.
“Your challenges are real,” Coleman wrote. “The state budget situation, as you know, continues to test the financial security of public institutions. It is essential that you attain enrollment growth commensurate with your ability and capacity to offer outstanding education. But the opportunity to launch U-M-Dearborn on a journey toward even greater excellence and distinction is equally real—and very inspiring.”
Coleman also praised Little for upgrading campus facilities, including new construction of the College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters Building and the Environmental Interpretive Center; renovation of the University Center; and acquisition of the Fairlane Center from Ford Motor Company.
Additionally he is credited with increasing academic connections to the region through projects such as the Southeast Michigan Greenways Project, an effort to preserve undeveloped green areas and link urban communities through hiking/biking trails; establishment of the Institute for Local Government that helps citizens learn how to run for office and serve in local government; and leadership in the Rouge Gateway Partnership, an effort to redevelop and environmentally restore the Lower Rouge Corridor.
Prior to joining the University, Little served as vice president for academic affairs and professor of philosophy at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pa. He also was associate dean of the faculty at Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y.
He holds a bachelor of science in mathematics and a bachelor of arts in philosophy, both from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a doctoral degree in philosophy from Harvard University.
Little’s most recent book is “The Paradox of Wealth and Poverty: Mapping the Ethical Dilemmas of Global Development,” a discussion of some of the normative issues raised by processes of economic development in the developing world. His other books include “Microfoundations, Method, and Causation: Essays in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences”; “Varieties of Social Explanation”; and “Understanding Peasant China.”
