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Snow College News-

Snow welcomes new Vice President for Academic Affairs

(December 30, 2013)

EPHRAIM, UT - “I believe good colleges have strong major programs, but great colleges understand and believe in their general education programs,” quoted Dr. Steve Hood as he arrived into his new position as the Snow College Vice President of Academic Affairs. 

After an extensive interview process, Dr. Hood was selected for his ability in program development and strategic planning while a professor of politics at the Ursinus College in Pennsylvania. President Wyatt liked that he was consistently told that, “Dr. Hood is an excellent teacher, creative, energetic, well respected and straightforward.”

With Dr. Hood’s innovation and leadership role, along with two other colleagues, he lead a new freshmen program implemented at Ursinus featuring works of science, art, social sciences, and humanities that presents the tougher questions within liberal education such as “What does it mean to be human? and How should we live our lives?” The program has seen great success, and in 2005 Newsweek called it “the hottest freshmen program in the country,” and was highlighted by the Chronicle of Education and Washington Post.  The program is currently being used by Columbia University as a model of how liberal education should be taught.

Dr. Hood recognizes that there will be challenges within his new position as he tackles the issues of faculty governance, workloads, and fiscal responsibility. Hood states, “I am confident that working with my faculty colleagues we can find solutions to challenges and lead future progress.”

Hood says that he is excited to join the collegiality and close-knit community of Snow and is impressed with Snow College’s devotion to the intellectual and moral development of students. Dr. Hood looks forward to the being apart of new academic programs, the college’s strategic goals, and introducing of future four-year programs.

Dr. Hood was born in Provo and raised in Farmington, New Mexico. He obtained his Bachelor and Master of Arts from BYU in political science and international relations and went on to earn his PhD from the University of California.  He has taught as a visiting professor at the University of Lima, Peru; Tohoku Gakuin University, Sendai, Japan; and Brigham Young University. A National Endowment for the Humanities Scholar at Columbia University, Dr. Hood has held two Fulbright Scholarships, in Taiwan and Peru. At Ursinus, he has received the Lindback Award for Teaching and the Laughlin Professional Achievement Award for scholarships.