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S. Abu Turab Rizvi, professor of economics and former dean of the Honors College at the University of Vermont, has been named provost. He will begin his tenure Jan. 20, 2015.
S. Abu Turab Rizvi
“I am delighted that Abu Rizvi will join Lafayette as provost,” says President Alison Byerly, who announced the appointment to the campus community today. “Abu’s experience as leader of an Honors College within a research university has given him a broad overview of curriculum and operations, as well as a deep appreciation of the residential liberal arts college mission. We all felt that Abu Rizvi was a perfect fit for this position, and for Lafayette.”
Under Rizvi’s leadership as dean of the Honors College from 2007 to 2014, the college doubled the size of its first-year class while sustaining academic standards, and increasing the diversity of its student body and the proportion of students who are in the first generation of their families to go to college.
Rizvi designed interdisciplinary faculty development seminars; helped create a curriculum drawing on faculty from across the university to engage students in active learning; promoted student participation in collaborative research with faculty mentors and success in national fellowships competitions; and designed and led the implementation of an initiative to integrate academic advising, learning beyond the classroom, and career planning support for students. He also led the development of academic and residential space for the Honors College.
Rizvi says, “I am honored to be chosen for this position. I look forward to joining the Lafayette community and helping to advance Lafayette’s ambitious agenda in the years to come.”
A member of the faculty at UVM since 1987, Rizvi holds master’s and doctoral degrees in economics from the New School for Social Research and a bachelor’s degree in economics from Vassar College. In the Honors College, he has taught seminars for first-year students on different approaches to knowledge and on ethics. His teaching in economics has included courses on microeconomics, the relation between well-being and the economy, economic methods, and game theory.
Rizvi’s research concerns general equilibrium and game theories and their history, as well as the study of poverty, well-being, and preference. He is co-author, with David P. Levine, of the book Poverty, Work and Freedom: Political Economy and the Moral Order, published in 2005 by Cambridge University Press, as well as author of many scholarly articles. Currently on leave as a visiting scholar at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, he is working on a book about liberal arts education in the 21st century.
Rizvi will be joined in Easton by his wife, artist and web designer Paige Berg Rizvi. Son Jaafar is an MBA student at New York University.