Ann Huff Stevens, professor and chair of the UC Davis Department of Economics and the director of the university’s Center for Poverty Research, has been appointed interim dean of the Graduate School of Management effective Oct. 1.

Stevens

“I am looking forward to working with Ann as she takes on this critical leadership role,” Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi said. “Given her scholarly formation as an economist and administrative experience as both department chair and director of the Center for Poverty Research, she is well equipped for this appointment.”

Stevens will serve until the deanship is filled on a permanent basis; she will not be a candidate for the job.

Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Ralph J. Hexter said campus leadership anticipates the search will run primarily during the 2015-16 academic year, with a new dean aboard ideally no later than July 1, 2016.

He or she will succeed Steven C. Currall, dean since 2009, recently named as a chancellor's adviser to lead the university's effort to possibly develop an additional campus in the Sacramento region.

“Ann has distinguished herself as a scholar, teacher and academic administrator during her career at UC Davis,” Hexter said. “She enjoys the respect and support of her colleagues across the campus, which will serve her well as she sustains the Graduate School of Management and maintains its forward momentum during this important transition.”

Stevens said: “I am energized by this opportunity to work with the outstanding faculty, alumni, staff and students at the Graduate School of Management. I know that we will make great progress together."

She was a faculty member at Rutgers and Yale universities before joining UC Davis as an associate professor in 2003. She became a professor in 2009 and economics chair in 2010

She is the founding director of the Center for Poverty Research, established in 2011 following a successful proposal for a five-year award from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She will continue to direct the center over the next two years.

Stevens studies low income workers and labor markets, the incidence and effects of job loss, connections between economic shocks and health, and poverty and safety-net dynamics. She is a faculty research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research.

During 2013-14, Stevens served as chair of the Provost’s Study Group on Access and Affordability, leading a group of faculty, staff and students in an examination of trends in and issues surrounding budgetary pressures and rising tuition.

She received her doctorate from the University of Michigan in 1995 and has served as an investigator on numerous grants from the National Science Foundation and other agencies.

Related story: Columbia University's Paul M. McNeil named as new dean of UC Davis Extension.

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