Eric William Kaler (born 1956)
is a
chemical engineer, professor, and university administrator. He currently serves as president of
Case Western Reserve University, a position he began in 2021.
From 2011 to 2019, Kaler was president of the
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...
. He returned to scientific research and teaching in the university's Department of Chemical Engineering in January 2021.
Before coming to Minnesota, Kaler served from 2007 to 2011 as provost and senior vice president for academic affairs and vice president for Brookhaven affairs at
Stony Brook University, New York.
In the latter role he oversaw interactions with
Brookhaven National Laboratory
Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory located in Upton, Long Island, and was formally established in 1947 at the site of Camp Upton, a former U.S. Army base and Japanese internment c ...
, which Stony Brook University co-manages with
Battelle Memorial Institute.
Early life and education
Kaler was born in
Burlington, Vermont, in 1956 as an only child in a military family that moved around a lot while his father served as a noncommissioned officer in the
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Aerial warfare, air military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part ...
.
Kaler received his B.S. (1978) from
California Institute of Technology
The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...
and his Ph.D. in chemical engineering (1982) from the University of Minnesota under the direction of
H. Ted Davis and
L. E. Scriven.
Career
He was an assistant professor (1982–87) and associate professor (1987–89) of chemical engineering at the
University of Washington
The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington.
Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattl ...
in Seattle. He joined the chemical engineering faculty of the
University of Delaware
The University of Delaware (colloquially UD or Delaware) is a public land-grant research university located in Newark, Delaware. UD is the largest university in Delaware. It offers three associate's programs, 148 bachelor's programs, 121 ma ...
in 1989 and was promoted to professor in 1991. He was named the Elizabeth Inez Kelley professor of chemical engineering in 1998, and was chair of the chemical engineering department from 1996 to 2000. He served as dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Delaware from 2000 to 2007 before moving on to Stony Brook to become Provost. He was a visiting professor at the
University of Graz
The University of Graz (german: link=no, Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz, ), located in Graz, Austria, is the largest and oldest university in Styria, as well as the second-largest and second-oldest university in Austria.
History
The univers ...
, Austria in 1995.
Presidency of University of Minnesota (2011 - 2019)
![2013-0427-EricKaler](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/2013-0427-EricKaler.jpg)
When Eric Kaler took office on July 1, 2011, he became only the second alumnus to rise to the position of University of Minnesota president.
Priorities and initiatives
In his first year on the job, Kaler emphasized his commitment to academic excellence and rigor by investing in new faculty positions. He stressed the importance of the university's groundbreaking research enterprise. He led a campaign to contain costs and operate the university more efficiently and effectively, with the goal of freeing up resources for the university's core teaching, research, and public engagement and service mission.
He acted on a pledge to keep the university accessible to students of all economic backgrounds by increasing financial aid and limiting the university's 2012 tuition increase to the smallest this century.
In his second academic year, Kaler and the university, in partnership with the
Minnesota Legislature, froze tuition for Minnesota-resident students. He proposed a set of innovative tax and tuition relief initiatives to aid students, their families, and donors, and also proposed performance measures that the university must meet to gain some of its state support.
The State of Minnesota also invested in a new research program known as MnDRIVE, in the amount of about $18 million per year. MnDRIVE in its first funding cycle, was focused on research around clean water, robotics, neuroscience, and food.
That request was expected to be heard by the
DFL Party controlled Minnesota Legislature and
Governor
A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political ...
Mark Dayton
Mark Brandt Dayton (born January 26, 1947) is an American politician who served as the 40th governor of Minnesota from 2011 to 2019. He was a United States Senator for Minnesota from 2001 to 2007, and the Minnesota State Auditor from 1991 to ...
during its 2013 session.
Kaler's outreach to the Minnesota business community has earned him and the university recognition by the U.S. Department of Commerce and the White House.
In 2012,
Secretary of Homeland Security
The United States secretary of homeland security is the head of the United States Department of Homeland Security, the federal department tasked with ensuring public safety in the United States. The secretary is a member of the Cabinet of the U ...
Janet Napolitano
Janet Ann Napolitano (; born November 29, 1957) is an American politician, lawyer, and university administrator who served as the 21st governor of Arizona from 2003 to 2009 and third United States secretary of homeland security from 2009 to 20 ...
named Kaler to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Academic Advisory Council.
Challenges and controversies
Kaler was appointed President of the
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...
after
Robert Bruininks during a period of decreased funding from the state legislature to the University of Minnesota. During his first year in office the state legislature reduced appropriations to higher education down to a level that were equivalent to the funding amounts from 1998.
In 2012, the
Minnesota Daily
The ''Minnesota Daily'' is the campus newspaper of the University of Minnesota, published Monday and Thursday while school is in session, and published weekly on Wednesdays during summer sessions. Published since 1900, the paper is currently the la ...
, the university student newspaper, criticized the university athletic department, under then-Athletic Director
Norwood Teague
Norwood Teague (born 1965) is the former athletic director at the University of Minnesota.
Early career
Teague graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) in 1988 with a B.A. in political science and later earned a master ...
, for deciding to spend $800,000 to reschedule a football game with North Carolina to increase the football team's rankings.
The University of Minnesota was profiled by ''
The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
'' in an analysis of higher education spending and mismanagement. According to the article, the University of Minnesota salary and employment records from 2001 through the spring of 2012 show that the university system added more than 1,000 administrators over that period. Their ranks grew 37%, more than twice as fast as the teaching corps and nearly twice as fast as the student body, the Journal reported. Growing under previous president
Robert Bruininks, the ''Journal'' reported that under Kaler the University of Minnesota has the largest share of employees classified as "executive and managerial" among the nation's 72 "very-high-research" public universities in the 2011–12 academic year.
In the wake of ''The Wall Street Journal'' story and a commentary in ''The Washington Post'' (that was reprinted in the Minneapolis ''Star Tribune''), Kaler wrote a response, detailing many of the accomplishments of the university in reducing administrative spending and holding down tuition. In it, Kaler wrote: "The articles did not report that, despite stunning state disinvestment, the university is more productive than at any time in recent history."
Research and publications
Kaler's research interests are in surfactant and colloid science, statistical mechanics, thermodynamics, and materials synthesis. His work has focused on
complex fluid Complex fluids are mixtures that have a coexistence between two phases: solid–liquid (suspensions or solutions of macromolecules such as polymers), solid–gas (granular), liquid–gas (foams) or liquid–liquid (emulsions). They exhibit unusua ...
s, which are characterized by changes of composition or density over length scales comparable to molecular dimensions. Examples are liquid crystals, microemulsions and
micelles
A micelle () or micella () (plural micelles or micellae, respectively) is an aggregate (or supramolecular assembly) of surfactant amphipathic lipid molecules dispersed in a liquid, forming a colloidal suspension (also known as associated coll ...
, some polymeric solutions, vesicles, emulsions, and protein solutions. He has supervised 37 Ph.D. students and numerous postdoctoral researchers, and has served as a consultant to numerous industrial laboratories and legal firms. Kaler is coeditor of the book ''Giant Micelles'' and is author or coauthor of more than 200 papers. He holds 10 U.S. patents.
Awards and activities
Kaler received one of the first Presidential Young Investigator Awards from the National Science Foundation in 1984 and has received numerous awards for his research, including the
American Chemical Society
The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a scientific society based in the United States that supports scientific inquiry in the field of chemistry. Founded in 1876 at New York University, the ACS currently has more than 155,000 members at all ...
(ACS) Award in Colloid or Surface Chemistry in 1998. He became a fellow of both the
American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2001 and the ACS in 2010.
He has served in a variety of positions in several professional societies, including the leadership ladder in the ACS Division of Colloid and Surface Chemistry, of which he was chair in 2006. He was cochair of both the 1997 and 2007 Colloid Symposia, held at the University of Delaware. He has chaired or cochaired three
Gordon Research Conferences
Gordon Research Conferences are a group of international scientific conferences organized by a non-profit organization of the same name. The conference topics cover frontier research in the biological, chemical, and physical sciences, and t ...
. Kaler was elected a member of the
U.S. National Academy of Engineering in 2010 for the elucidation of structure-function relationships in surfactant systems that has led to novel formulations of complex, self-assembled media.
Among other leadership activities, Kaler is a member of the Guthrie Theater Board, the co-chair of Generation Next — which is a community partnership committed to closing the education achievement gap — Chair of the NCAA Division I Board of Directors, and Chair of the Big Ten Council of Presidents and Chancellors.
In April 2014 Kaler was named to the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...
, one of the nation's most prestigious honorary societies. He was elected in two categories: for his work as a chemical engineer and as a higher education administrator.
References
External links
*
Eric W. Kaler biographyEric Kaler's UMN Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science faculty page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kaler, Eric W.
California Institute of Technology alumni
University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering alumni
Presidents of the University of Minnesota
1956 births
Living people
Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering
Minnesota CEMS