The Tim and Steph Busch School of Business will welcome back a familiar face in July when its founding dean, Andrew V. Abela, returns to take the helm of the growing school.
Abela has been serving since 2015 as University provost. In a letter sent to the University community on May 6, President John Garvey announced that Abela was the top pick for the job after an extensive search.
“Andrew has served with exceptional competence, vision, and energy these last four years,” Garvey said. “Chief among those has been his leadership in advancing several key projects‒‒the redesign of our core curriculum, our academic renewal, and his role in pushing forward numerous fundraising initiatives.
“I am pleased to see him returning to the Busch School, where he can contribute the additional experience and perspective he gained while serving as provost. The business school hosts some of our most popular majors, and Andrew is the right person to ensure its continued growth in academic rigor and enrollment.”
President Garvey also announced that the position of provost would be filled by the current dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, Aaron Dominguez.
“We are most fortunate to have a world-class physicist lead our faculty,” said Garvey. “An accomplished professor and scientist, our new provost will draw from his years of teaching, his significant research experience, and his knowledge of the world of academia to assert with even more vigor our standing as a research university.”
Dominguez has served since July 2016 as the dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, while continuing his internationally renowned research in particle physics. As provost he will oversee Catholic University’s 12 schools, its libraries, the Center for Global Education — including the Rome campus — CUA Press, and several research institutes.
A search will begin for a dean of the School of Arts and Sciences. An announcement regarding an interim dean will be forthcoming.
Read the full letter below:
ABOUT ANDREW ABELA
Andrew Abela has served four years as the provost of The Catholic University of America. He previously served as the founding dean of the Busch School of Business and chair of the Department of Business and Economics. Prior to his academic career, he spent several years in industry as brand manager at Procter & Gamble, management consultant with McKinsey & Company, and managing director of the Marketing Leadership Council of the Corporate Executive Board.
Abela holds a B.Sc. from the University of Toronto, an M.B.A. from the Institute for Management Development (IMD) in Switzerland, and a Ph.D. in Marketing and Ethics from the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia.
He and his wife, Kathleen, live in Great Falls, Va., with their six children. He is a native of the island of Malta.
ABOUT AARON DOMINGUEZ
Aaron Dominguez served as dean of the School of Arts and Sciences since July 1, 2016. He previously served as associate dean for research and global engagement and professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL).
Dominguez, whose area of research is experimental high-energy physics, has a strong history of research and grant activity. As part of a National Science Foundation (NSF) cooperative agreement for $9.5 million, he leads a team that includes researchers from UNL and eight other universities in the construction of the next generation of particle detectors for the group’s experiment at the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland.
Dominguez received a B.A. in math and physics from Whitman College in 1992, a B.S. in applied physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1992, an M.S. in physics from the University of California at San Diego in 1994, and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of California at San Diego in 1998.
Dominguez was a faculty member at UNL from 2004-2016. He served as a full professor of physics and astronomy beginning in 2015, and as an associate dean for research and global engagement beginning in 2014. Prior to working at UNL, he served as a postdoctoral fellow at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory from 1999 to 2004, as a postdoctoral research assistant at the University of California at San Diego from 1998 to 1999, and as a graduate research assistant at the University of California at San Diego from 1992 to 1998.
He and his wife, Julie, live in Chevy Chase, Maryland, with their two daughters.