UNC Chancellor Carol Folt announced today that Dr. Kim Strom-Gottfried will serve as the director, ethics and policy management, effective Aug. 1. Strom-Gottfried is the Smith P. Theimann Jr. Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Professional Practice in the School of Social Work. She completed her 8 years as Academic Leadership Program Director at the Institute for the Arts and Humanities.
Folt said Strom-Gottfried in this newly created role will “focus on coordinating ethics programs and reporting mechanisms, along with overseeing management of the University’s policy infrastructure. In addition, she will serve as an advocate for ethics resources and programs, helping identify, coordinate and promote ethics-related opportunities across campus.”
Strom-Gottfried served as ALP Director for 8 years. She is also an ALP Fellow. The program helps prepare and support current and emerging UNC academic leaders. Eight Fellows are selected annually to engage in a series of activities to help them develop leadership skills, clarify their career commitments, build a network within the campus and extend their contacts to other leaders beyond the University.
After completing her stint at the IAH, this summer Strom-Gottfried consulted in Saudi Arabia teaching administrators at schools there. She is also working on a book on courage, using her experience in coaching leaders.
At Carolina since 1999, Dr. Strom-Gottfried has held several roles in the School of Social Work, including serving as interim dean from 2000 to 2001. She was also the Director of the Academic Leadership Program for the Institute for the Arts and Humanities from 2008 to June 2016.
The position of director, ethics and policy management “was created on the joint recommendation of two working groups: Ethics and Integrity, and Policy and Procedure, which were commissioned after the release of the Wainstein Report in 2014,” according to Folt. It is “an important role.”
In a recent IAH podcast interview with Faculty Fellow Program Director Michele Berger, Strom-Gottfried said this about leadership: “People can lead in a lot of ways. People who are leading their research teams, or their labs, People who are leading change efforts in their departments, without necessarily being chair or director of graduate studies. Those people are [practicing] profound leadership.”