Dr. Timothy O'Rourke Named Dean of Fulton School

SALISBURY, MD -- Dr. Timothy G. O'Rourke, Teresa M. Fisher Professor in Citizen Education at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, was recently appointed dean of the Charles R. and Martha N. Fulton School of Liberal Arts at Salisbury University. His appointment is effective August 15, 2002.

"Dr. O'Rourke brings the energized advocacy of a liberal arts education and demonstrated commitment to civic and community engagement we sought as the leader of the Fulton School," said SU Provost David H. Buchanan. "He also is committed to a collaborative management style, essential in a liberal arts school with such a diversity of disciplines."

"In my view, the dean must have both an on-campus and off-campus mission," said O'Rourke. "The on-campus mission must encourage faculty to teach well, to see careful advising as an extension of their teaching and to be vital scholars who play an active role in their respective disciplines.

"Faculty and students are key in the off-campus mission," he said. "In the grand scheme, the Fulton School must develop projects and programs that cultivate, inform and enlarge the constituency of concerned citizens, on and off campus, who know about and participate in the public affairs of the community, state and country."

O'Rourke holds a joint appointment to the Division of Education Leadership and Policy Studies in the College of Education and the Department of Political Science in the College of Arts and Sciences at UMSL. Since 1998, he has been the executive director of Kids Voting Missouri, a program in which nearly 68,000 Missouri elementary and secondary students went to polling sites and voted alongside their parents in the 2000 presidential election.

From 1992-95, O'Rourke was professor and head of political science at Clemson University. Prior to that he was a faculty member in the University of Virginia's Center for Public Service for 14 years. From 1985-92, O'Rourke served as executive director of the Virginia Commission on the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution.

O'Rourke is widely published and has testified before both U.S. House and Senate committees on various voting issues and has served as an expert witness in voting rights litigation.

O'Rourke's teaching interests include state politics, school law, and voting rights and representation. His is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Pittsburgh (1970) and holds a Ph.D. in political science from Duke University (1977).

The Fulton School, which was endowed in 1989 by Charles and Martha Fulton of Snow Hill with a multi-million dollar gift, includes the faculties of art, communication arts, English, history, interdisciplinary studies, modern languages (French, German and Spanish), music, philosophy, political science, psychology and sociology.