Dooley

During the last nine years, David M. Dooley has been a major player in attracting big bucks to Big Sky country — helping expand the research budget from virtually nothing to $100 million at Montana State University in Bozeman, a city of 27,500 set against a Rocky Mountains panorama.

Now Dooley, provost and chief academic officer at Montana State and a former chemistry department chairman at Amherst College, in Massachusetts, is making a bid to return to the East Coast as president of the University of Rhode Island, where building the research capacity is a top priority.

One of three finalists for the URI presidency, Dooley has helped Montana State rise to the top tier of research universities as classified by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. URI is in Carnegie’s second tier.

Montana State’s president, Geoffrey Gamble, says Dooley is “fully capable of stepping into a presidential role.”

Last week, Dooley became the third of five finalists to withdraw from consideration for the president’s post at the University of Idaho, with no reason given except a mutual decision that Dooley and that institution would not be a good fit.

Montana State has 12,369 undergraduates and graduate students, while URI’s total enrollment stands at 15,904, including the College of Pharmacy.

Gamble described Dooley as “a great fundraiser. He’s capable of telling good and compelling stories of a university so that donors feel they want to be a part of that.”

Dooley is a man of strong opinions but has become comfortable with consensus-building during the last nine years, says Wesley Lynch, the president of the Faculty Senate.

Dooley chairs the university budget and planning committee, which has a broad-based membership that includes an undergraduate and a representative of the local business community. The committee holds its deliberations in public and governs by majority vote.

He “doesn’t say, ‘Here’s what we’re going to do,’ but ‘Here’s the objective we’d like to reach,’ and he’ll lay out the options,” Lynch said.

“He’s a very smart guy. When you interact with him, you want to know what you’re talking about,” said Lynch, who meets with Dooley about once a week.

The chairman of the department of chemistry and biochemistry, David Singel, describes Dooley as “a charming person to be around.”

“He is a fun person. He is smart [and] quick on his feet,” said Singel, who also described him as a top-notch scientist.

Lynch, meanwhile, said that “if you polled the entire faculty, there would be some who say they don’t like him, and others who say he’s the best thing since peanut butter.”

“But most people say he’s doing a pretty good job,” Lynch said.

With shrinking resources for faculty raises last year, Dooley sought the recommendations of the Faculty Senate before taking action on a structure that guaranteed modest increases across the board while reserving some funds to reward special merit, Lynch said.

Lynch said Dooley’s style as an administrator grew out of his roots as a hard-nosed scientist.

Dooley was hired by Montana State in 1993 from Amherst College — an unusual outside appointment — to address internal problems in a well-regarded but politically divided department of chemistry and biochemistry, according to Lynch.

Dooley put out the political fires and made chemistry and biochemistry one of the strongest, if not the strongest department on campus, Lynch said.

He said Dooley is “very effective” at dividing his time between research and the provost’s office.

Singel, the chemistry department chairman, agrees.

Dooley maintains a “prolific and high-impact” research group that investigates how metal ions — atoms or molecules with an electrical charge — bond with proteins and affect the proteins’ behavior, Singel said.

Understanding these pathways has implications for treating human diseases, Singel said.

Meanwhile, he spearheaded new research initiatives in biomedicine, energy, the humanities, and community-based public-health work on tribal reservations, according to his vitae.

He is listed as an author on 145 research papers, the most recent one published in 2008.

One of Dooley’s critics, Ed Mooney, a professor of mechanical engineering, said the provost’s policies have “essentially directed resources into building buildings and hiring non-faculty personnel” at the expense of undergraduate education, functioning as a second vice president of research rather than the chief academic officer.

But Singel said Dooley has fostered a “synergy” between education and research that is characteristic of top-tier research institutions. Dooley, a California native, received his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of California at San Diego in 1974 and a doctorate in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 1979, a year after he had started work as an assistant professor at Amherst. After the move to Montana in 1993, Dooley led the chemistry and biochemistry department for six years before becoming interim provost and vice president for academic affairs. After Gamble was named president, he appointed Dooley provost, in part because of the way he handled budget decisions as interim provost, according to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.

The Chronicle reported that Dooley’s wife, Lynn Baker-Dooley, is a Baptist minister. They have two grown children. The presidential hopefuls

A glimpse of the 3 candidates for president of URI

ROBERT D. NEWMAN

Current job: Associate vice president for interdisciplinary studies, dean of the College of Humanities and professor of English at University of Utah.

Some accomplishments

 Began new interdisciplinary programs in international studies, environmental humanities, American Indian languages, Latin American studies, animation studies and others.

 Increased funding to College of Humanities by 300 percent

 Increased undergraduate majors in humanities by 15 percent.

SONA KARENTZ ANDREWS

Current job: Provost and vice president for academic affairs and professor of geosciences at Boise (Idaho) State University.

Some accomplishments

 Added new Ph.D. programs in geosciences, electrical and computer engineering.

 Created a task force to help freshmen adapt to college life, raised freshman retention rate 7 percent.

 Launched after-work program for adults to complete bachelor’s degree.

DAVID M. DOOLEY

Current job: Provost and vice president for academic affairs and professor of chemistry/biochemistry at Montana State University.

Some accomplishments

 Fostered development of new core curriculum for undergraduates with required first-year seminars.

 Established learning centers for math and chemistry in residence halls.

 Oversaw creation of new Ph.D. programs in animal and range science, neuroscience.

You’ll find profiles of all three candidates at projo.com

gmacris@projo.com