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Academic Affairs Leadership & Staff

Dr. Robert Tudor
Title	Interim Provost, Vice President for Academic Affairs
Email	rtudor@shepherd.edu ( Email )
Phone	304-876-5176
Prior to his academic career, Dr. Robert Tudor held numerous arts administration positions at organizations including the Florida International Festival, Central Florida Cultural Endeavors, University of Miami Opera, and the Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland, College Park. Robert served members of college preparatory boarding schools in the United States and Canada as Assistant Director in charge of membership and professional education for Admissions and Residential Life Directors at The Association of Boarding Schools. He worked as Assistant Dean at Levine School of Music in Washington, DC managing programming and scholarship partnerships with external organizations and assisting with accreditation for their four regional campuses. In 2006, Dr. Tudor’s career in higher education began at Jacksonville University as Director of Opera and Music Theater and Chair of the Division of Music in the College of Fine Arts where he earned his tenure. In 2012, Robert came to Shepherd University as Chair of the Department of Music. He became Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences in 2019, and Interim Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs in the summer 2023. In all his positions, he has built sustaining partnerships and established strategic initiatives to drive positive staff and organizational performance improvements. He is recognized for contributions in delivering fundraising expertise, financial improvements, and performance optimization through strategic operations leadership. Robert holds a Doctorate in Musical Arts from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a certificate from the Institute of Management Leadership in Education at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.

Dr. Kurtis Adams
Title	Interim Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Email	kadams02@shepherd.edu ( Email )
Phone	304-876-523780
Kurtis Adams found his passion for music at an early age. As a child, he gave pretend concerts in between raiding his parents’ music collection. Eventually, the pretend concerts became real when he began playing the saxophone at age nine, then deciding to pursue music professionally while in high school. After completing his bachelor’s degree, Dr. Adams moved to Boulder for graduate studies at the University of Colorado. As an integral part of the Colorado music community, he performed with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, Colorado Music Festival Orchestra, Ultraphonic Jazz Orchestra, Metropolitan Jazz Orchestra, and the 9th and Lincoln Orchestra, and shared the stage with great musicians including Arturo Sandoval, Paquito D’Rivera, Greg Gisbert, Pat Bianchi, Jeff Jenkins, Brad Goode, Joe Lovano, Conrad Herwig, Jiggs Whigham, Tom Harrell, Bobby Shew, and Bob Mintzer. As a recording artist, Dr. Adams has recorded three albums as a leader: Two Weeks Until Tuesday, Collage, and Micro-Orchestra. Additionally, he has appeared on several albums as a sideman and continues to perform throughout the mid-Atlantic region. Currently, Dr. Adams serves as Interim Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and is the Director of Jazz Studies at Shepherd University where he directs the jazz ensembles and teaches courses in the jazz curriculum.

Dr. Jason Best
Title	Assistant Vice President for Strategic Planning and Institutional Effectiveness
Email	jbest@shepherd.edu ( Email )
Phone	304-876-5331
Dr. Jason Best serves as the Assistant Vice President for Strategic Planning and Institutional Effectiveness. He is also a professor of astronomy and astrophysics and the director of the Shepherd University Observatory. A member of the Shepherd University faculty since 1997, he earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Indiana University and a Ph.D. from The Pennsylvania State University. He has served on the national Council on Undergraduate Research’s Task Force on Integrating Research into the Curriculum and on the National Advisory Committee for the PRAXIS Earth and Space Sciences Examination, as president of the West Virginia Academy of Science, as a member of the Shepherd University Board of Governors, and as president of the university Faculty Senate. He was a member of the 2015-2016 American Council on Education Fellows Class, focusing his fellowship project on research efforts at primarily undergraduate institutions. Dr. Best was recently appointed to the Higher Learning Commission’s Peer Review Corps, and currently serves on the Shepherd University Foundation as both a board member and member of the Executive Committee. He chairs the university Institutional Review Board, and serves as Shepherd’s Accreditation Liaison Officer. As part of a multiyear National Science Foundation-funded grant beginning in 2015, Dr. Best established the Shepherd hub of the Pulsar Search Collaboratory, an initiative designed to remotely teach high-school students across the nation to conduct research on data obtained by the Green Bank Telescope. Dr. Best’s research publications and presentations are in fields as diverse as galactic evolution, the large-scale structure of the universe, virtual reality, and the evolution of Renaissance cosmology. In addition, he has been awarded many research grants from federal and state agencies, has been featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Research section and in West Virginia Science and Research’s Neuron journal and Scientist Spotlight Video Series, and has served as a grant reviewer and research referee for numerous national and international journals and agencies.

Dr. Amy DeWitt
Title	Associate Dean of Student Academic Enrichment
Email	adewitt@shepherd.edu ( Email )
Dr. Amy DeWitt has been appointed as the Associate Dean of Student Academic Enrichment beginning the spring 2022 semester. Dr. DeWitt joined the Department of Sociology and Geography in the fall of 2008. She has taught a variety of courses, including Family, Research Methods, Ethnic Relations, Demography, Social Problems, Sociology of Education, and General Sociology. She also team-teaches within the Women’s Studies program. Dr. DeWitt’s interests are primarily rooted in gender portrayals, particularly in children’s media. She is completing a Master’s in College Student Development and Administration, and she possesses a Master’s in Educational Administration and Supervision; this coursework has inspired new areas of interest in student success. Having traveled extensively and served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Poland, Dr. DeWitt has a strong interest in cultural studies and cross-cultural adaptation.

Dr. Ben Martz
Title	Dean, College of Business, Recreation, and Education
Email	bmartz@shepherd.edu ( Email )
Phone	304-876-5007
Dr. Ben Martz is the Dean of the College of Business. He also holds the Edward L. Snyder Endowed Chair in Business. During the 2021-2022 academic year, he served as the Interim Provost/Vice President of Academic Affairs. Ben received his B.B.A in Marketing from the College of William & Mary; his M.S. in Management Information Systems (MIS) and his Ph.D. in Business, with an emphasis in MIS, from the University of Arizona. He was one of the founding members, as well as President and COO, of Ventana Corporation – a technology, spin-off firm from the University of Arizona – incorporated to commercialize the groupware software product GroupSystems. In 1994, GroupSystems won PC Magazine’s Editor’s Choice award for best Electronic Meeting System software. In 1995, Ben was an Ernst & Young nominee for Entrepreneur of the Year in Arizona. Ben’s teaching interests include problem solving and creativity, business analytics, software development, groupware and team-based problem solving. He has published his groupware research in MIS Quarterly, Decision Support Systems, and the Journal of Management Information Systems and his student learning and problem solving research in Journal of Cooperative Education, Journal of Computer Information Systems and the Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education.

Dr. Robert Warburton
Title	Dean, College of Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Nursing
Email	rwarburt@shepherd.edu ( Email )
Phone	304-876-5106
Dr. Bob Warburton is an honors graduate of the University of Essex at Colchester, completing research with Professor Ken Douglas, in the UK. Dr. Warburton earned his Masters and Ph.D. in the laboratory of Professor David Seybert at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA. After completing an NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship in the the laboratory of Professor Jeffrey Frelinger of the School of Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill he came to Shepherd. Currently Dr. Warburton divides his time between his role as Dean, working with the the members of the College of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics and teaching Biochemistry while carrying out collaborative research in Molecular Immunology studying cellular models in the pursuit of developing effective Breast Cancer Immunotherapies. As Chair of the Pre-Professional Advisory Committee, Dr. Warburton works closely with students preparing for professional careers in Medicine, Dentistry, Pharmacy, and Veterinary Medicine. His passion is in making sure that he provides the resources that Shepherd students need to succeed and are prepared to take the next steps in their chosen career.

Ms. Sara Maene
Title	Director, Institutional Research
Email	smaene@shepherd.edu ( Email )
Phone	304-876-5112
Office	Ikenberry 104A
Ms. Maene earned her B.A. from Wellesley College, double majoring in both physics and astronomy. She earned a Master’s degree in astrophysics and a Postgraduate Certificate in institutional research from Penn State University. After several years as the Application Systems Specialist for Penn State’s University Testing Services, she came to Shepherd. She then worked for several years in I.T. Services, first as the Information Technology Assistant specializing in UNIX and Mac operating systems, and then as the Data Network Specialist. Since 2005, she has served as the head of Shepherd’s Office of Institutional Research, which provides institutional data to federal and state entities as well as the university community. While at Shepherd, Ms. Maene has been professionally active in numerous disciplines. She is a member of the national Association for Institutional Research, is currently Shepherd’s representative to the WV HEPC’s Data Policy Advisory Council, and was a member of the inaugural board of directors of the West Virginia Association for Institutional Research (WVAIR). She has published and presented numerous research papers in the field of scientific visualization. She has also served as a NASA JPL Ambassador to the Solar System and the Vice-Chair of Shepherd’s Classified Employees Council, as well as an officer of Shepherd’s chapter of Phi Kappa Phi.

Valerie Wright
Title	Academic Affairs Coordinator
Email	vwright@shepherd.edu ( Email )
Phone	304-876-5176
Valerie graduated from the Castleton State College in 1998 with a bachelor’s degree in Developmental Psychology and Elementary Education. Val taught fourth grade for five years before taking time off to raise her children. She returned to the education field as the Administrative Assistant to the Principal of a middle school, where she worked for 11 years. She moved to West Virginia in 2021 and began working at Shepherd as the Administrative Assistant for the Departments of Communications, History and English and Modern Languages before taking the position with Academic Affairs at the end of 2022.