UW emeritus professor named acting director of NSF

Cora Marrett, an emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, has been named acting director of the National Science Foundation (NSF). Marrett assumes her new duties June 1.

Marrett’s appointment was announced Friday (May 28, 2010) in a memo distributed to all NSF employees. Marrett, who has a long history as a top administrator with the science agency, has been serving as acting deputy director of NSF since January of 2009.

In the memo, Arden L. Bement Jr., the departing director of NSF, said the appointment was made after consultation with the White House about the status of the search for a new director for the agency. NSF is a primary funder of basic scientific research in the United States, and in fiscal year 2009 had a budget of nearly $6.5 billion. Bement is leaving NSF to direct the Global Policy Research Institute at Purdue University.

Marrett was a UW–Madison faculty member in sociology and Afro-American Studies from 1974-1996. From 1996-2000 she was senior vice chancellor and provost at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. In 2001, she was appointed as the UW System’s chief academic officer.