Va. Tech College of Science names interim dean

Virginia Tech announced Tuesday that Ron Fricker, senior associate dean of the College of Science, has been named as interim dean, effective Jan. 4.

Fricker succeeds Dean Sally C. Morton, who is leaving to become executive vice president of the Knowledge Enterprise at Arizona State University at the end of 2020. She served as dean of Tech’s College of Science for four-and-a-half years. 

“I am proud of what my colleagues in the College of Science have accomplished in the past several years,” Morton said in a statement. “Science has always been a foundation of what makes Virginia Tech great, and I think our work has elevated the idea that scientific excellence is essential to the university’s future.”

A statistics professor, Fricker has been with Tech for more than five years and has also served as the head of the Department of Statistics.

“At its core, the heartbeat of the College of Science is its people – faculty, staff and students – who are passionately engaged in research, teaching, and learning,” Fricker said in a statement. “As interim dean, I will be focused on their success and well-being. With their help, we will continue the college’s upward trajectory, including successfully recruiting the next dean, so that together we can take the College of Science and Virginia Tech to even greater heights.”

Fricker, whose research focuses on statistical models for use in disease surveillance, is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is also a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Board on Mathematical Sciences and Analytics. 

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