Southeastern University appoints four new academic deans

Meghan Griffin became provost at Southeastern University on May 1, and since then she has led the hiring of four new deans to run academic programs. Three of the four are new to the university.

Southeastern has announced the appointments of Aimee Franklin, Jeffrey Paul, Nathaniel Pearson and James V. Shuls as deans. Pearson will assume his position on July 12. The others took their new roles on July 1.

“I couldn’t be more excited,” Griffin said. “This team hasn’t even met each other yet; they won’t until Aug. 2. But it’s a really impactful team. I believe we’ve got a really dynamic team, and any school would want a team like this.”

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Nathaniel Pearson

Pearson takes over as dean of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, replacing Erica Sirrine, who left higher education.

Before joining Southeastern, Pearson was the inaugural Elvin and Fleta Patterson Sims Director of the Berry Center for Integrity in Leadership at Berry College in Rome, Georgia. He previously served as an assistant professor, program chair and executive director at Cabrini University in Pennsylvania and as an assistant professor and interim program chair at West Virginia University.

Pearson holds a master’s degree in counseling from Regent University and a doctorate in leadership studies from Gonzaga University. In addition, he has worked as a counselor, family therapist and site director for many family counseling centers and as executive director and pastor of Bellevue Foursquare Church.

James V. Shuls

Shuls is now dean of the College of Education. He replaced James Anderson, who left for a job outside of higher education. As dean, Shuls will work closely with the American Center for Political Leadership, the school said in a news release.

Shuls arrived from the University of Missouri-St. Louis, where he was an associate professor and the chair of the Educator Preparation and Leadership Department. He holds a master’s degree in elementary education from Missouri State University and a doctorate in education policy from the University of Arkansas.

Shuls served as director of education policy at the Show-Me Institute in St. Louis, for which he was a distinguished fellow of education policy. He has classroom teaching experience at the kindergarten and elementary school levels.

Jeffrey Paul

Paul succeeds Lyle Bowlin following his retirement as dean for the Jannetides College of Business and Entrepreneurial Leadership. Paul previously served as chair of the Fenimore Fisher Graduate School of Business at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he was also an associate professor of management and marketing.

Paul has held faculty positions at the University of Tulsa, Illinois State University and Oklahoma State University, from which he earned a Ph.D. in management. He has also been vice president of strategy and planning for a public oil and gas exploration company.

Paul is the co-editor for the Organizational Management Journal, as well as a reviewer for three other journals.

Aimee Franklin

Franklin as dean for the College of Natural and Health Sciences. Franklin replaces Deborah “Debbie” Hazelbaker, who will be retiring at the end of the 2020-21 academic year. 

Franklin, a Southeastern graduate, now leads the College of Natural and Health Sciences. She succeeded Deborah “Debbie” Hazelbaker, who retired June 30.

Franklin earned a bachelor’s degree in pre-medicine and biology in 2007. She received a Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of Alabama-Birmingham, and during that time, completed research on Fragile X Syndrome (FXS), the most commonly inherited form of autism.

She returned in 2014 as a full-time faculty member and has been teaching as an associate professor of biology, leading her students in biomedical research projects.

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Griffin joined SEU in 2017 as dean of Unrestricted Education and later added the title of associate provost. She became provost after the retirement of William C. Hackett, who is now provost emeritus and a professor of practical ministry.

Griffin said Southeastern has changed substantially in recent years as it expanded its worldwide network of regional campuses and extension sites to about 200. Since her promotion to provost, Griffin has been emphasizing the connected nature of all the university’s programs.

“What we’re doing is an academic realignment across the entire institution so that everyone who works for SEU thinks about SEU with its fullness in mind,” she said, “so we all have a mental map of all of these connection points for our institution.”

The four openings for deans figured into that “realignment,” Griffin said.

“It just so happens that with a couple retiring and a couple moving on, it created an opportunity to build what is essentially a brand-new academic leadership team,” she said. “It created an opportunity that new provosts don’t get very often, which is to build an incredibly dynamic team. And so I took that opportunity as something that happens truly once in a career, once in a lifetime, once in an institution’s history.”

Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or 863-802-7518. Follow on Twitter @garywhite13.