UA notebook

UA names dean of education, health

FAYETTEVILLE — An honors dean and medical school professor has been named the top administrator for the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville’s College of Education and Health Professions.

Brian Primack, 50, will begin July 1 as dean of UA’s third-largest college by enrollment, with 5,277 students in fall 2018.

Primack, dean of the University of Pittsburgh Honors College since 2017, also serves as director of that school’s Center for Research on Media, Technology, and Health. His research showing a heightened risk of depression for young adults who frequently check social media was discussed last year on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered.

He will earn a salary of $370,000, UA spokesman Steve Voorhies said. The total includes $126,000 in endowed funds from private donors and $44,000 from a National Institutes of Health research grant, Voorhies said.

Primack replaces Michael Miller, who will continue at UA as a professor of higher education.

Primack earned a medical degree from Emory University and is a professor of medicine, pediatrics, and clinical and translational science at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. In Arkansas, Primack will hold an appointment as a community health professor with the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

Primack holds bachelor’s degrees from Yale and a master’s degree from Harvard. He earned a master’s degree and a doctorate in clinical and translational science from the University of Pittsburgh. Students, faculty to split new award

FAYETTEVILLE — A $100,000 gift from a University of Arkansas, Fayetteville graduate will establish a student and faculty award named in memory of a longtime professor who died in 1986.

The Thomas Cary Duncan Eaves Endowed Award honors the memory of Eaves, who joined UA in 1949 and co-edited with UA professor Ben D. Kimpel a biography of British novelist Samuel Richardson.

The gift from Stephen Dill — himself a retired English professor who taught at the University of South Dakota — will support an award to be given out to UA Department of English students and faculty, in alternating years. Student awards will go toward school expenses, and faculty awards will support teaching, according to UA.

Dill earned a bachelor’s degree and doctorate from UA. He lives in Kansas City, Mo., and, in a statement released by UA, remembered Duncan Eaves as “very passionate about his discipline” while also having “a sense of humor about it.”

“I chose to teach novels as a specialty because of him,” Dill said. “He kept me going in my field, because his enthusiasm for his subject was contagious.”