New York.- Dominican Republic native Feniosky Peña-Mora, associate provost of the University of Illinois, has been appointed to serve as the next dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, according to a Columbia University announcement.

According to the announcement, Peña-Mora "has earned an international reputation for his scholarship, teaching, research and engineering innovations, as well as hands-on leadership in managing major university engineering programs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of Illinois, where he has served as associate provost."

Peña-Mora, who grew up in the Dominican Republic, has served as the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Edward William and Jane Marr Gutgsell Endowed Professor in the civil and environmental engineering department for six years. He is also associate provost there, overseeing institutional programming, and a center affiliate at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. Peña-Mora earned his masters and doctorate in civil engineering from MIT, where he as assistant professor and associate professor of information technology and project management in civil and environmental engineering.

Peña-Mora will begin his tenure on July 15, and will succeed current interim Dean Gerald Navratil. The search for a new dean at SEAS has proceeded over the past two years, following previous Dean Zvi Galil's spring 2007 announcement that he would be leaving Columbia to become president of Tel Aviv University. Peña-Mora will arrive at Columbia during a time of great administrative flux, and he will join the newly-minted Columbia College dean Michele Moody-Adams. Within SEAS, though, the climate is changing as well, since the school recently saw a surge in applicants.

“I was so impressed with the energy and enthusiasm I saw among the faculty, students, staff, and alumni/ae at the school,” Peña-Mora said in a University press release. “It was clear to me that the SEAS leadership at Columbia has built a very strong foundation in recent years, well positioning the school to move to the next level in terms of its impact on the university, the local community, the nation and the world. Many important innovations have taken place at SEAS over its long history and continue to take place today. It is exhilarating for me to see how committed Columbia’s students, faculty, staff, alumni/ae and university leadership are to an even more exciting future.”

“Columbia is fortunate to welcome such a remarkable new engineering dean at a time when the school is becoming ever more central to the university’s mission—from its interdisciplinary work with our medical center in the life sciences and our Earth Institute in climate science to its pioneering service-learning curriculum that is a national model for civic engagement between university and community,” University President Lee Bollinger said in the release. “He will be an outstanding leader for our School of Engineering and Applied Science.”

Peña-Mora's arrival in Morningside will be, in a sense, a return to his roots. While he was growing up, he spent some time each year with family in Washington Heights, and learned how to speak English through English as a second language programs in Teachers College and Riverside church.

The announcement comes after a longer than usual search process. At the end of spring 2008, Spectator learned that the University had lined up several finalists. But during the fall, according to Bollinger, the search committee—which was led by Provost Alan Brinkley and composed of students, faculty, and administrators—begun anew