Franklin appoints Dr. Kris Bulcroft as Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs

04/28/2008

Franklin College Switzerland announces the appointment of Dr. Kris Bulcroft to the newly created position of Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs.

Dr. Bulcroft held the positions of Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and Professor of Sociology at Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington. Prior to her experience at Western Washington, she was a member of the faculty at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota.

President Erik Nielsen, on announcing Dr. Bulcroft’s acceptance of the position, stated, “All of us at Franklin were very impressed with her strong academic experiences as well as her forthrightness and enthusiasm for Franklin College. We are confident she will bring new perspectives to Franklin and help guide us in the coming years.”

The Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs reports directly to the President of the College and in his absence serves as senior administrator. The Provost has responsibility for all aspects of academic affairs and also oversees student affairs and admissions. In addition to her wide range of academic experiences, Dr. Bulcroft’s oversight and development of enrollment management and First-Year Experience programs makes her ideal for the position at Franklin.

This highly important new position will assist Franklin College in moving through a period of strategic transition to an innovative academic model that connects academic programs in the liberal arts with programs in international management, communications and governmental relations. This model includes two schools and multi-disciplinary institutes which support faculty research and scholarship and which will be the basis for focused future graduate programs. The new academic plan includes robust experiential learning opportunities that continue the strong Academic Travel programs for which Franklin is known. The Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs will lead these key academic strategies.

Franklin College, accredited in both the U.S. and Switzerland, serves a diverse student body drawn from the United States and over 50 other nations. Named for Benjamin Franklin, the United States' first and most illustrious ambassador to Europe, Franklin was founded in 1969 as a nonprofit, independent, post-secondary institution. It is a four-year baccalaureate-degree-granting institution, incorporated in the State of Delaware, licensed by the State Board of Education as a Delaware institution of higher education and accredited in the United States by the Middle States Commission on Higher Learning. All programs of study leading to the Franklin College Bachelor of Arts degree have been granted Swiss university accreditation by the Swiss University Conference (Schweizerische Universitätskonferenz).

Dr. Kris Bulcroft - Bio

Kris Bulcroft held the positions of Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and Professor of Sociology at Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington. Prior to being at Western, she was on the faculty of St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. As Vice Provost, she oversaw a wide range of programs and projects supporting teaching and learning at Western. Under her leadership the general education program was reviewed and revamped, a first-year experience was designed and assessed, and a campus-wide reading program was instituted. Dr. Bulcroft also served as Western’s representative on many of the statewide higher education initiatives such as accountability, transfer policy and high-demand enrollment funding. Most recently she led the university’s institutional accreditation efforts. Dr. Bulcroft holds a B.A. degree from Pacific Lutheran University, an M.A. from Eastern Washington University and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. Her primary field of study is sociology, with emphasis on family life and aging. She has published widely on issues relating to family and aging policy, life course transitions and family rituals. From 1986-88, she was an NIMH postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington Institute on Aging and worked as a research scientist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. Dr. Bulcroft has received Fulbright Awards for research and teaching in Canada and Slovakia and served as a reviewer for Fulbright proposals for Central Europe. She and her husband, Richard Bulcroft, are delighted to be joining the Franklin College community.

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