BRIEFS

Dr. Valarie A. Zeithaml has been named senior associate dean for academic affairs at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, effective Jan. 1, 2003.

"Valarie Zeithaml exemplifies many characteristics that will contribute to her success in this important leadership role," said Dr. Julie H. Collins, the current senior associate dean who has been named Kenan-Flagler’s interim dean, also effective Jan. 1. "She is committed to the highest standards of excellence and is a strong mentor and motivator of others. She is a proven leader whose talents will make enormous contributions to Kenan-Flagler’s continued momentum."

Zeithaml has chaired the school’s marketing area for four years and the faculty group has flourished under her leadership, Collins said.

"Serving Kenan-Flagler in this role will be an honor, and I’m enthusiastic about joining the leadership team at a time of real opportunity for the school," said Zeithaml. "As we build on a legacy of achievement, we are poised for even greater success."

Zeithaml, the Roy and Alice H. Richards Bicentennial professor, has devoted the last 20 years to researching, consulting and teaching the topics of service quality, services management and customer equity.  She has studied customer expectations in more than 40 industries, including information technology, communications, insurance, education, law, engineering, finance and health care.

She is co-author of the best-selling business book "Delivering Quality Service: Balancing Customer Perceptions and Expectations" and the textbook "Services Marketing." Her book, "Driving Customer Equity: How Customer Lifetime Value is Reshaping Corporate Strategy," was published in 2000.

  Zeithaml has won numerous teaching and research awards, including the Ferber Award from the Journal of Consumer Research, the Maynard Award from the Journal of Marketing, the Jagdish Sheth Award from the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, the O’Dell Award from the Journal of Marketing Research and the award for Career Contributions to Services Research in Marketing from the 2001 American Marketing Association Frontiers in Services Conference. She is a member of the board of directors of the American Marketing Association and is a trustee for the Marketing Science Institute.

  She has consulted with more than 40 service and product companies, including IBM, Kaiser Permanente, General Electric, John Hancock Financial Services, Aetna, AT&T, Sears, Metropolitan Life Insurance, Bank of America, Chase Manhattan Bank, Allstate, U.S.West, BellSouth, Pacific Bell and Procter and Gamble.

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The American Academy of Pediatrics recently presented Dr. Mel Levine, UNC professor of pediatrics, with the Milton J.E. Senn Award for accomplishments in school health.

Levine, director of the Clinical Center for the Study of Development and Learning at UNC, is the founder of the non-profit All Kinds of Minds Institute, which provides programs to help students who struggle with learning measurably improve their success in school and in life.

For more than 25 years, Levine has pioneered programs for the evaluation of children and young adults with learning, development and-or behavioral problems. Levine’s framework for understanding why children struggle in school provides a system for recognizing variations in the way children learn and uses their strengths to become more successful students.

Through his clinical work and research, he and his colleagues at All Kinds of Minds created the Schools Attuned professional development program to help educators recognize and manage differences in learning in the regular classroom. Schools Attuned was launched as a year-round professional development program in 2000, and more than 4,000 educators have been trained to date.

The American Academy of Pediatrics is dedicated to the attainment of optimal physical, mental and social health of all infants, children, adolescents and young adults. The academy’s Section on School Health annually presents the Senn Award to honor pediatricians and allied health professionals who make outstanding national contributions to improving school health. The 2002 Senn Award is sponsored by the National Pediculosis Association.

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Kenan-Flagler Business School contact: Allison Adams, (919) 962-7235

All Kinds of Minds contact: Gail Rubin, (505) 265-7215