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Terry Singer might consider himself an avid gardener, but there's one -Teplant he just doesn't have any luck with. Well, so what if he can't grow a tomato?
Instead, Terry Singer grows phlox and roses at home and an entire department at the University of Louisville.
Singer, 57, is dean and professor at U of Us Raymond A. Kent School of Social Work and has been since 1997, when thenPresident John Shumaker drew him in with this challenge: "This used to be a great school with a great tradition, and I want you to make it great again."
Among the goals set before him for the graduate school: Bring in a sizable increase in outside money to help pay for its projects, get the school more involved with the community, and make research a priority.
Those high-powered goals could have wilted some candidates for the job, but Singer wasn't about to leave a small college in Pennsylvania to lead a status-quo department.
Seven years ago, lie was working his 20th year at Marywood School of Social Work, a small, Catholic, private institution in Scranton, Pa. Although he says he is proud of his accomplishments there as dean, he weighed his future.
He thought to himself, "I'm 50 years old. I want to build something else." As it turned out, U of L, was the new landscape he chose to try.
"This place offered me the best opportunity and challenge," he says. Two larger schools were also interested in his services, be adds, but they wanted him to be "a caretaker."
And a "caretaker," others say, Singer is not.
Dedicated to faculty and to his field
On campus - actually, the department's facilities are spread among five buildings, from its main site on the Belknap Campus to the Shelby Campus - Singer "will go out of his way" to help his faculty solve problems and advance their careers, says Dr. Riaan van Zyl, associate dean of research.
Van Zyl is a native South African who Singer recruited in 2000 to specialize in research after the university "gave" Singer the new position to work with. Singer calls van Zyl, 53, "the smartest person I've ever met in my life."
Van Zyl, in a return compliment says...