Several admins set to depart from campus
The University will soon be down three administrators due to retirement, resignation and revised roles, according to a series of emails sent to Brandeis students, faculty and staff.
Senior Vice President for Finance and Treasurer Marianne Cwalina, who has been at the University for five years, will be retiring at the end of June, according to a Dec. 15 email to the community from Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration Stew Uretsky.
Nancy Winship, the senior vice president for institutional advancement, will take on a new role as chief philanthropic adviser to the president — assisting primarily with donor cultivation and solicitation — effective June 30, according to a Jan. 10 email to faculty and staff from University President Ronald Liebowitz.
Deputy Chief Information Officer and Chief Information Security Officer Michael Corn, on the other hand, has resigned from the University to begin a new position as chief information security officer at the University of California, San Diego. His resignation is effective Jan. 31, according to a Jan. 9 email announcement sent to the University community from Interim Chief Information Officer Jim La Creta.
Corn said that his decision to leave the University was a combination of personal and professional reasons. “It was difficult to actually decide to leave,” he wrote in an email to the Justice.
However, he wrote, the new position at UCSD is what he has been looking for as the next move in his career. “I spent the early part of my career at a very large State system with a large research computing portfolio. I remain active in the research computing community and UCSD has one of the largest expenditures on research in the country, well over a $1 billion per year for the last 6 years,” he wrote.
“As a security professional the combination of academic and research activity at this scale is uniquely attractive. Personally, my wife and I have been thinking about moving to a warmer climate and San Diego certainly checks the ‘great weather’ checkbox. My older pups will appreciate the lack of snow and ice too,” he joked.
As he transitions to this new role, Corn wrote that he is most looking forward to re-examining how he approaches challenges. “I once read that the biggest mistake a leader can make is to bring their past experience and vision with them,” he said. “I think this is because we often don’t recognize how deeply our environment shapes our thinking. We’re entering a kind of golden age for information security — all you need to do is look at how it played a role in the recent election to see that. So, the opportunity to start fresh and re-envision where we’re going in the world of information security is very exciting.”
Still, Corn took care in noting the significance of the advancements he and his colleagues have overseen in the Library and Technology Services and security departments. “Many of the projects we’ve undertaken are largely invisible to most staff and students, and that’s by design,” he said. “We’ve implemented firewalls and intrusion prevention technology that’s stopping hundreds of thousands of attacks on the University every day,” he wrote, citing programs that stop traffic to malicious URLs, encrypted workstations on campus and better managed anti-malware software.
Though Corn is excited for this next stage in his career, he wrote that he looks forward to maintaining the relationships he has built over his three years at the University. “While LTS has divided into two parts, Library and IT, which I strongly support, I have to be grateful for the collegiality and patience of the profoundly talented library staff,” he wrote. “I’ve made many lasting friendships at Brandeis, and I am positive they’ll survive the 3000 miles between us.”
Winship and Cwalina did not return requests for comment as of press time.
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