Ho stepping down as vice provost for graduate education

UB’s point person for graduate education for nearly a decade is stepping down from the post.

John Ho, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor of Physics, is leaving his position as vice provost for graduate education and dean of the Graduate School on Aug. 1 to return to his faculty appointment in the Department of Physics.

A search for Ho’s successor will begin immediately, with an appointment expected before the end of the spring semester.

“John’s service as vice provost and dean has been outstanding,” says Provost Charles F. Zukoski. “In his nine years of leadership, John has enhanced graduate student support and development, helped UB achieve strong graduate enrollments — including record enrollments in several years — and raised the overall prominence and quality of graduate education at UB.

“As a leader, John’s commitment to the success of UB’s graduate programs, students and faculty is matched only by his professionalism and integrity,” Zukoski says.

Ho was named acting vice provost for graduate education and dean of the Graduate School in 2006. He was appointed interim vice provost in 2007 and assumed the position on a permanent basis in 2010.

Ho is credited with numerous accomplishments in the area of graduate education, among them:

• Establishing the Office of Comprehensive Program Review as an integral element of UB’s ongoing effort to assess and improve its academic programs.
• Strengthening the Office of Graduate Enrollment Management Services to assist departments and programs in their graduate recruitment, resulting in an all-time-high graduate and professional enrollment.
• Improving the Graduate School’s Office of Student Services by streamlining its operations and the degree-candidacy process.
• Facilitating the Graduate School’s key role in the introduction of the HUB student system.
• Promoting graduate student retention, completion and career preparation through closer monitoring and advisement, and enhanced professional development for graduate students by working in partnership with various university entities, including the Office of Career Services, the Teaching and Learning Center, and the Center for Excellence in Writing.
• Enhancing the Office of Postdoctoral Scholars to provide services for principal investigators and career development opportunities for postdoctoral scholars.
• Playing leadership roles in assisting UB in securing favorable outcome in important external evaluations, including the National Research Council’s Assessment of Research-Doctorate Programs and Middle States reaccreditation.

Ho has held other administrative positions at UB outside the Graduate School, including those of associate dean and interim dean of the former Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, chair of the Department of Statistics and associate dean for graduate education and research in the College of Arts and Sciences.

A UB faculty member since 1975, Ho is an experimental condensed matter physicist with research interests in the use of light scattering, magneto-optics, electro-optics and electron diffraction to study phase transitions and critical phenomena in ferromagnets, liquid crystals, biomembranes and microemulsions.

He held faculty positions at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Houston before joining the UB faculty.

Ho also has served on various committees and panels at the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Education, the Council of Graduate Schools and the American Physical Society, and is a fellow of the APS. Among his academic honors are the DuPont Young Faculty Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Ho received a BSc in physics and mathematics from the University of Hong Kong and a PhD in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.