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Principal Investigator, Provost Harold Hellenbrand

Provost HellenbrandOur Program Director, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Harold Hellenbrand, will be involved at a university level in ensuring that resources are optimally utilized and that the progress of the program is consistent with the proposed timeline. Provost Hellenbrand has been a central support to CSUN’s research function. Since his arrival at CSUN in 2004, Provost Hellenbrand has initiated several means of support for research on our campus including a University Research Fellows program that recognizes and rewards faculty researchers in each college in the university. From his website, he is described this way: “After earning his bachelor's degree in English and American literature from Harvard College in 1975, Provost Hellenbrand received his doctorate in modern thought and literature from Stanford University in 1980. Dr. Hellenbrand brings a wide range of administrative and academic experiences to California State University, Northridge, including 18 years of experience within the CSU System. Provost Hellenbrand served as Dean, and Professor at the College of Liberal Arts at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo from 1998-2004; as Dean, and Professor at the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota, Duluth from 1994 - 1998; and as Chair, and Professor of the English Department at California State University, San Bernardino from 1982 - 1994. His background reflects strengths in planning, K-12 linkages, retention efforts, and commitment to diversity.

Dr. Hellenbrand is glad to return to the Los Angeles area, and especially to the public urban university setting which he considers central to regional economic success and closer to major political and social currents. He is also attracted to Northridge's dedication to teacher renewal, something that is crucial to the Los Angeles area now and over the next 20 years.” Recently he has been PI or co-PI on three significant grants. While dean of Liberal Arts at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, he lead a FIPSE grant to recruit and retain minority students in the sciences and engineering, under the strictures of Proposition 209. He also chaired the campus committee on diversity and climate for five years. At CSUN he has PI’d the Carnegie-funded Teachers for a New Era and co-PI’d the NSF-funded SCALE project with LA Unified. Both projects are piloting interventions and evaluations in teacher preparation to improve pupil learning, especially in science and math. Since his appointment at CSUN, he has increased matching and start-up funds, especially in the sciences and social sciences. Internally, he has funded several projects linking health sciences both to K12 and early career preparation. In the last two campus planning cycles, he has launched an initiative to group the campus’s community outreach centers within a clinical structure that delivers integrated, preventative and pre-emptive health care to the institutionally underserved San Fernando Valley.