Inside Clemson

Associate provost, acting associate provosts named

By Jackie Todd, University Relations

An accomplished leader and 13-year veteran of Clemson has been appointed associate provost for faculty affairs. Amy Lawton-Rauh, Ph.D., professor and associate chair of the Genetics and Biochemistry department in the College of Science, will assume the position August 16.

Lawton-Rauh succeeds the position first held by Ellen Granberg before Granberg was promoted to senior associate provost at Clemson, and then later named provost of the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Reporting to Executive Vice President of Academic Affairs and Provost Bob Jones, Lawton-Rauh will implement strategies and programs to attract, recruit, retain and mentor Clemson’s faculty. She will support the goals of the Clemson Forward plan by building an engaged community of top-talent faculty, supporting faculty recruitment, professional development, and transdisciplinary collaboration while cultivating diversity, inclusion, and equity.

“Amy is a champion of building consensus among her colleagues,” said Jones. “Her experience, goals and participation in leadership roles at Clemson make her the right choice for this position.”

Lawton-Rauh joined Clemson in 2005 as an assistant professor in the Genetics and Biochemistry department. She became an associate professor in 2011 and earned full professorship in 2017.

Her service on Clemson’s Faculty Senate started when she was elected senator in 2013. She chaired the research committee for three years before she became president-elect in 2016 and then served as the 2017-18 president. She now serves as immediate past president.

Lawton-Rauh is the principle investigator of her research group studying the population and quantitative genomics of crop wild relatives and weedy species. She directs the USDA National Needs Fellowship program at Clemson and works with colleagues in the College of Science and College of Agriculture, Forestry and Life Sciences leading this program to provide cross-college, transdisciplinary training to graduate students who will be the next generation of research scientists, policy makers, and educators in computational genomics in agriculturally-relevant systems.

Acting associate provosts named

Cole Smith, Ph.D. was appointed acting associate provost for academic initiatives. A professor and chair of the industrial engineering department in the College of Engineering, Computing and Applied Sciences, Smith became a Fellow in the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers this year. As acting associate provost, he will track, enable, and where needed, lead progress on all aspects of the ClemsonForward strategic plan. He will also develop strategies to increase efficiency, focus, and success of academic operations, and analyze, enable and implement entrepreneurial activities that increase revenues to support academic programs.    

Constancio Nakuma, Ph.D. has been appointed acting associate provost for academic affairs. Nakuma is a professor of French and senior associate dean for academic affairs in the College of Architecture, Arts and Humanities. He has 26 years of leadership experience including six as department chair and 10 as associate dean at Clemson. The acting associate provost will be responsible for supporting teaching and learning excellence, academic enrichment and professional development programs for undergraduate and graduate students, curricular innovations, health and operations of academic units, education policy, accreditation and faculty scholarship. 

Jones said that internal searches will be initiated this month to find permanent appointments for the two roles.