William McGimpsey, new vice president of research, hopes to build and enhance the reputation of Kent State through high quality research and scholarship.

“My main job will be to find the opportunity for funding and bring those back to the faculty at Kent,” McGimpsey said. “I’ll be involved with forming teams at Kent to work together across other disciplines to reach high quality of research and scholarship.”

President Lester Lefton and Provost Robert Frank settled the decision for the new vice president of research early last week after the search committee had narrowed down a few candidates.

“His visions and how he saw us growing the enterprise here at Kent State was very strong, and he got very high marks from all the different groups that interacted with him as a candidate,” Frank said in an interview last week. “So our sense at the end of the day is that he had the right experience, the right skills, the right visions and the ability to articulate that vision and the ability to work with all the different stakeholders in the community.”

“I’m very, very excited,” McGimpsey said. “I wanted to move to an institute like Kent that has more programs over more disciplines. Combining disciplines across the board provides a better opportunity in successfully facing challenges.”

McGimpsey served as the director of Bioengineering Institute at Worcester Polytechnic Institute since 2005. He also assumed the role of associate provost for research ad interim from 2007 to 2010 at WPI. His first official day at Kent State will be August 1.

“My new role will involve talking to faculty a

nd students to determine strengths and expertise, and that’s something I’ve done a lot of at WPI,” McGimpsey said. “I’ve put together faculty from six to seven different departments to work together, and it has been successful.”

Sonia Alemagno will keep the position of interim vice president of research until McGimpsey arrives. She will then return to her position as associate dean of the College of Public Heath.

“Sonia has done a great job during her time there of improving our capacity for grant management and doing things that I think are going to make his job a little easier,” Frank said. “Some of what has to happen when somebody comes in from the outside is they have to do an inventory of where we’re at and help us determine what they think needs to happen.”

“McGimpsey will leverage the success Sonia had and keep it going,” Frank said.

Contact Jessica Costello at [email protected]