Bakken announced as second provost candidate
March 26, 2017
The second provost candidate has been announced on Eastern’s website as Jeffrey Bakken, currently the associate provost for research and dean of the graduate school at Bradley University.
Bakken is staying until Wednesday to go through the on-campus interview process.
An open forum for students to ask Bakken questions will be from 1 p.m. to 1:50 p.m. Tuesday in the Arcola/Tuscola room of the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union. The faculty forum will be directly after from 2 p.m. to 2:50 p.m. in the same place. An open session for the staff and staff senate will be from 11:05 p.m. to 11:50 p.m. Wednesday in the Arcola/Tuscola room.
Bakken was an associate professor in the department of specialized educational development at Illinois State University from Aug. 1999 to July 2004. From 2004 to 2012, he served as a full-tenured professor at Illinois State.
He became the interim chair of the department of special education at Illinois State in July 2007 and continued in that position until Dec. 31, 2008. He then became the official chair of that department from Jan. 1, 2009 to Aug. 16, 2011.
In 2011, he served as interim associate dean for research, graduate studies and international education in Illinois State’s College of Education. In 2012 he was relocated to Bradley University, where he served as the dean of the graduate school and sponsored research for a year. In 2013, he became associate provost for research and dean of the graduate school at Bradley.
In his current position, he helped increase Bradley University’s graduate enrollment from 578 students in 2012 to 1113 students this past fall. He also helped raise the international graduate population from 118 in 2012 to over 400 currently.
According to his resume, in his past position as interim dean at Illinois State University, Bakken was able to approve all grant proposals when the dean was off-campus and unable to do so. He was also in charge of analyzing all graduate programs in the college, deciding if these programs should grow, be reduced or be deleted.
