FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 8, 2006
Media Contacts: Micki Leventhal, 312.344.7383, or Priscilla Hunter, 312-344-7805
Chicago, IL - Dominic A. Pacyga, Ph.D. (57) has been named Acting Dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Columbia College Chicago. He will assume his post on June 15, succeeding Dean Cheryl Johnson-Odim, who is leaving Columbia to become Provost at Dominican University. Pacyga will serve as Acting Dean for the 2006-7 academic year.
Pacyga has taught at Columbia since 1984. He was the 1999 winner of the college's Excellence in Teaching award and has served as Acting Chairperson of the Liberal Education Department.
He first became affiliated with Columbia College in 1981 when he served as Associate Director of the Southeast Chicago Historical Project, a major public history program that resulted in an archive containing over 5,000 photographs, artifacts, and other collections, now housed in the James P. Fitzgibbons Museum in Chicago. The project also resulted in a major exhibit at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry, a PBS film, "Wrapped in Steel," and a book of historical photographs Chicago's Southeast Side (co-authored with Rod Sellers).
Prior to receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1981, Pacyga had published Chicago: A Historical Guide to the Neighborhoods (co-authored with Glen Holt). His other books include Chicago: City of Neighborhoods (co-authored with Ellen Skerrett), which received an award from the Catholic Press Association, and Polish Immigrants and Industrial Chicago: Workers on the South Side, 1880-1922, which received the Halecki Award from the Polish American Historical Association. Polish Immigrants and Industrial Chicago was reissued by the University of Chicago Press in November 2003.
He has also published numerous journal articles, book chapters, reviews and encyclopedia articles and presented more than thirty papers at scholarly conferences in the United States, Poland and Canada. He has been actively involved in public history projects, most recently serving as guest curator of a major exhibit, "The Chicago Bungalow" which ran from October 18, 2001 to January 15, 2002 at the Chicago Architecture Foundation. The exhibit resulted in a companion volume, The Chicago Bungalow (co-edited with Charles Shanabruch).
"My work in public history has taken me beyond academia to work with various labor, neighborhood, youth and social service agencies," notes Pacyga, a life-long Chicagoan. "I firmly believe that it is important for professors to be involved in the larger society, and that history and the humanities have important roles to play in a democracy.
"To this end I remain active in various professional organizations. Currently I serve on the Board of Directors of the Immigration and Ethnic History Society and the Urban History Society. I have been a reviewer for various journals and academic presses, and I sat on the editorial board of the Journal of Urban History from 1995 to 1998. I also served as the Chair of the Illinois State Historical Records Advisory Board/State Archives Advisory Board."
Pacyga has also been a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago. In the spring of 2005 he was a Visiting Scholar at Campion Hall, Oxford University. He is currently working on Chicago: An Urban Biography, forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press.
"Dominic is an extremely popular teacher, an accomplished scholar and has demonstrated great ability as an administrator," says Provost Steven Kapelke. "He is a dedicated and engaged citizen of the college. I'm delighted that he has agreed to take on this very important assignment and am profoundly confident that he will provide strong, humane leadership during the next year."
Columbia will be conducting a national search for a new Dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
NOTE: Dominic Pacyga is available for interviews. Headshot available.