MEDIA CONTACT: Charles R. Loebbaka at (847) 491-4887 or at c-loebbaka@northwestern.edu

Gibbons Named Dean of Continuing Studies

Thomas F. Gibbons

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Thomas F. Gibbons, director of the DePaul University Office of Continuing and Professional Education since 1996, has been appointed dean of the School of Continuing Studies (SCS) at Northwestern University.

His appointment will take effect in late June, it was announced by Provost Lawrence B. Dumas and President Henry S. Bienen.

Gibbons succeeds Richard Lorenzen, who is retiring after serving as dean since August 1999 and will resume his interests in travel and the arts.

Dumas said, "Gibbons brings a background that will be extremely valuable as SCS maintains its commitment to offering high quality degree programs while also expanding its outreach by offering non-degree programs to adult learners in the Chicago area. We share the enthusiasm for his appointment expressed by the search committee and the various deans and other administrators who met with him during the search process."

Gibbons was recommended for the position by a student-faculty-staff-alumni search committee that included two deans and was chaired by Gregory Ward, professor of linguistics.

He is founding director of the DePaul program that has become a major provider of continuing studies programs in the Chicago metropolitan region. Gibbons has launched more than 100 new courses within several dozen professional certificates, which enroll more than 2,500 adult learners annually.

An attorney with a background in labor and employment law, Gibbons serves on the faculty of DePaul's College of Law, where he has taught classes in negotiation/mediation and arbitration. He is also the co-director of DePaul's Center for Dispute Resolution, which sponsors research and educational programs in alternative dispute resolution. He also serves as a mediator and labor arbitrator. He is chair of the Chicago Bar Association's Alternative Dispute Resolution Committee (2002-03) and president-elect of the Association for Conflict Resolution, Chicago Chapter (2002-03).

Prior to his appointment as head of DePaul's continuing and professional education division, Gibbons founded and served as executive director of DePaul's Center for Workforce Education. The project, housed within DePaul's adult education degree program, the School for New Learning, was created to promote new models of education for adult learners, especially by fostering collaboration and innovation in the workplace.

Gibbons has a JD degree from the DePaul University College of Law and an MSL degree from Yale Law School, where he was a Yale-Ford Foundation Graduate Fellow. For five years, Gibbons practiced labor and employment law for the Chicago firm of Hogen, Marren & McCahill. He also worked for a number of years as a journalist, including serving as the legal affairs writer for the Chicago Sun-Times.