New administrative appointments

McGill's Admissions, Registrar's and Student Exchange Offices will be folded into a single administrative unit as of June 1. The move was recently announced by Vice-Principal (Academic) Bill Chan.

Mariela Johansen, currently director of admissions, will become the head of the Admissions and Registrar's Office. "I'm hoping this will allow us to do things in a smoother way," says Johansen. "We'll have the critical mass of people we'll need to be more imaginative in how we operate."

Registrar Jean-Paul Schuller will become associate director of the Admissions and Registrar's Office. Schuller will be responsible for developing new strategies for recruiting more francophone students to the University. He'll also coordinate retention studies on McGill's student population aimed at giving the University a better sense of why some students have difficulties completing their degrees.

Johansen says several work groups composed of representatives of the existing offices have been busy since September looking at how responsibilities such as counter service and the handling and tracking of records might be handled in an integrated office.

She says the new set-up should work to the benefit of students. "Students don't really know where the line is drawn between Admissions and the Registrar's Office. Why should they? This ought to make things easier for them, giving them one office to deal with for a variety of different matters. As we make this move, improving customer service is very much on our minds."

In other administrative news, Professor Richard Lawton from the Department of Performance has been named as the next Dean of Music, effective June 1. Deputy director of libraries Frances Groen will become the director of McGill's libraries in September. Dr. Shree Mulay from the Department of Experimental Medicine and the Royal Victoria Hospital will take over as the new director of the McGill Centre for Research and Teaching on Women this summer.

Following are brief biographies of the dean-elect and the incoming directors:

Professor Richard Lawton

Dean of Music

After completing his undergraduate studies at McGill, Richard Lawton earned a master's degree in music (trombone with a minor in music history and literature) from Indiana University. He joined the Faculty of Music in 1969 as a part-time lecturer.

A former chair of the Department of Performance, Lawton helped develop several new graduate programs and is currently the director of graduate studies for the department. He also chairs an ad hoc committee created by Dean of Music John Grew that is reviewing the Faculty's academic, financial and administrative operations. The committee is to propose new directions for the Faculty to explore over the next five years.

Lawton planned and coordinated the move of the Faculty to the Strathcona Music Building in the early 1970s and was a Faculty-appointed advisor to the design group responsible for planning Pollack Hall. As a musician, he has been a member of the Mount Royal Brass Quintet and the Montreal Trombone Quartet and has performed with artists as diverse as the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Ginette Réno, Sammy Davis Jr., Liberace and Julio Iglesias.

Mariela Johansen

Director of Admissions and Registrar's Office

Johansen first started working at McGill in 1977 as an administrative assistant in the Faculty of Medicine's office for postgraduate medical education and professional affairs. She became assistant to the Vice-Principal (Academic) in 1981 and then manager of the Admissions Office in 1987. Currently director of admissions, Johansen has served on Senate and presently sits on a number of McGill committees, including the University Admissions and Scholarships Committee, the Task Force on Enrolment, the Alumni Association Committee on Student Relations and the Board of Governors' External Communications Committee.

As director of admissions, Johansen works with senior administrators and program directors on issues related to admissions policies and enrolment projections. She is responsible for the publication of McGill's student calendars, the administration of the entrance scholarships programs and undergraduate recruitment. Johansen also responds to appeals for reconsideration from rejected applicants to the University. Before arriving in Montreal in 1976, she studied science at Simon Fraser University.

Frances Groen

Director of Libraries

Groen joined the McGill libraries in 1973, after working in the library systems of the University of Pittsburgh and Stanford University. Starting at McGill as the life sciences area librarian, Groen became associate director of libraries in 1990 and deputy director last year.

She completed undergraduate degrees in Arts and in Library Science at the University of Toronto and earned a master's degree in the history and philosophy of science from the University of Pittsburgh, where she also completed the course work towards a PhD. Groen has published several papers on topics such as collections evaluation, international issues in librarianship and organizational planning. She was named a distinguished member of the Academy of Health Information Professionals in 1990.

Groen served as the president of the Medical Library Association and chairs the International Federation of Library Associations' standing committee on biological and medical sciences libraries. She currently serves on McGill's Senate. Groen has chaired the Senate Committee on Student Discipline and has been an active member of the McGill Association of University Teachers.

Dr. Shree Mulay

Director of the McGill Centre for Research and Teaching on Women

Shree Mulay received her undergraduate training at the University of Delhi. She completed a master's degree in science and a PhD at McGill. She joined the McGill Department of Experimental Medicine in 1973 as a lecturer.

She is currently an associate professor in that department. Mulay is an associate member of the Department of Physiology and an associate fellow of the McGill Centre for Developing Area Studies. She is also the assistant director of the Royal Victoria Hospital's Endocrinology and Clinical Biochemistry Laboratories.

As a researcher, Mulay is interested in the role played by hormones during pregnancy and in the use of reproductive technologies and their effect on women's health.

She is the co-founder of the South Asian Women's Community Centre and an active member of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women. She served as a government advisor on the Canadian delegation at the United Nations International Conference on Population and Development in 1994.