Sunder Ramaswamy, Middlebury College dean for faculty development and research and Frederick C Dirks Professor of International Economics, will be the new president of the Monterey Institute of International Studies, California, USA. He will succeed the incumbent, Clara Yu, who retires on December 31, 2008, said an announcement on the Monterey Institute web site.
According to Middlebury College President Ronald D Liebowitz, the Monterey Board of Trustees unanimously recommended the 44-year-old Ramaswamy to the Middlebury board for approval.
'Sunder Ramaswamy is the perfect successor to Clara at this crucial juncture in the relationship between our two institutions. His scholarly background and credentials, his administrative experience at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, and his knowledge of both institutions gives us great confidence that Sunder will build on Clara's successes. As the project director overseeing the affiliation between Middlebury and Monterey, he has become well acquainted with all facets of both organisations.
'Sunder is a respected scholar in his field, who understands the challenges facing institutions of higher education in the 21st century -- a century dominated by globalisation -- and how Middlebury and Monterey are uniquely qualified to address these challenges,' Liebowitz was quoted in the announcement.
Ramaswamy is also project director of the Middlebury-Monterey Integration Task Force, a committee charged with fostering collaboration across all areas of both institutions after MIIS became an affiliate of Middlebury in 2005.
A graduate of St Stephen's College, New Delhi, where he majored in economics, Ramaswamy went on to do his master's in economics from the Delhi School of Economics, and his doctorate in the same field from Purdue University. His principal areas of expertise are development economics, international economics, and issues in applied microeconomics. In 2002 he was named the Frederick C Dirks Professor of International Economics.
Ramaswamy joined the Middlebury faculty in 1990 as assistant professor of economics and was promoted to associate professor in 1996 and full professor in 2001 and has been in his current position since the summer of 2007.
From 2003-05, he was director of the Madras School of Economics in Chennai and from 2006-07, he served as acting dean of the Middlebury faculty. He has also served as a member of numerous committees, including the taskforce that created the college's innovative international studies major in 1996. He chaired the economics department for seven years.
Ramaswamy has also been involved with World Bank and various UN agency projects on different aspects of economic reforms in India, as well as with projects on agricultural development in Sub-Saharan Africa sponsored by USAID and other agencies. His teaching and other academic work have been supported by grants from the Davis Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the Kellogg Foundation.
Ramaswamy's co-authored books include The Economics of Agricultural Technology in Semiarid Sub-Saharan Africa with John H Sanders and Barry I Shapiro (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), and Economics: An Honors Companion, with Kailash Khandke, Jennifer Gamber and David Colander (Richard D Irwin Publishers, 1995).
Ramaswamy, his wife Varna, and their 5-year-old son Srivatsan will move to Monterey in December.
