| Gary A. Olson | |
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Provost of Idaho State University
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| In office April 1, 2009 – Present |
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| Born | December 12, 1954 |
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| Spouse(s) | Lynn Worsham |
| Residence | Pocatello, Idaho |
| Alma mater | Kings College University of Connecticut Indiana University of Pennsylvania |
| Profession | Professor |
Gary A. Olson (born December 12, 1954) is a scholar of rhetoric, writing, and culture. He currently serves as Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Idaho State University[1]. He oversees seven colleges, ISU’s libraries, and the Idaho Museum of Natural History.
Olson served as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Illinois State University from 2004 to 2009, where he led the college through an ambitious strategic plan; created a college-wide technology support unit; established the college’s weekly newsletter; formed three high-level advisory boards; launched a number of faculty support initiatives; and created the institution’s largest faculty and staff recognition awards, raising nearly a quarter of a million dollars to endow them.
For nearly two decades (1985-2004), Olson served as an administrator and faculty member at the University of South Florida, one of the nation’s top 63 public research universities offering 219 degree programs (including the MD) to over 46,000 students on four campuses. Olson served as the chief academic officer at USF’s St. Petersburg campus from 2002 to 2004, helping to lead the campus to become a free-standing, self-governing, and separately accredited campus within the USF system.
Olson writes a popular monthly column on higher education administration for the Chronicle of Higher Education, and he is co-editor, with John W. Presley, of The Future of Higher Education: Perspectives from America’s Academic Leaders (Paradigm, 2009).
He is the author or editor (often in collaboration) of 20 books and almost 100 essays and articles and has written on a number of subjects central to rhetoric studies, including the role of theory in rhetorical scholarship, the connections between ideology and discourse, and the contributions of Stanley Fish.
Olson performed a series of scholarly interviews with some of the world's most controversial intellectuals. He began the series in 1991 as editor of the Journal of Advanced Composition (now simply JAC), a prominent journal of theoretical scholarship. Over a decade and a half, he conducted extensive, in-depth interviews probing the life's work of such internationally renowned intellectuals as anthropologist Clifford Geertz, linguist Noam Chomsky, deconstructionist Jacques Derrida, postmodern theorist Jean-François Lyotard, philosophers of science Sandra Harding, Biologist Donna Haraway, political philosopher Ernesto Laclau, and feminist theorist bell hooks. These interviews were published in JAC and later in a series of books published by State University of New York Press, Southern Illinois University Press, and Paradigm Publishers.
Olson, who came to Idaho from Illinois State University, was quick to take a shot at the State Board of Education when the discussion turned to budgetary issues. "I thought I had already been in the state with the wackiest state government with [impeached Gov. Rod] Blagojevich, but this really takes the cake," Olson said. If you think this is really something, you ought to go to the State Board of Education meetings. That's really like going to a circus. So, I don't think any of those people have ever gone to college, much less gotten a degree at one."[2]
Faculty at Idaho State University have submitted a petition demanding that a no-confidence vote be held against Provost Gary Olson. [3]
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