Barry Raleigh will step down from SOEST dean's position this summer to return to research faculty status

Barry Raleigh, longtime dean of the UH Manoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), has informed Chancellor Peter Englert that he will step down from his dean‘s position on August 1 to return to faculty status.

"Dean Raleigh increased the research profile of SOEST, and along with other units at Manoa brought us to new prominence as a premiere research institution," Chancellor Englert said. "Barry is a nationally and internationally respected scholar and researcher, and I am certain that he will contribute to the stature of the university by returning to the laboratory and to the classroom where nurturing our students is a tremendously invigorating part of our work."

Raleigh joined the University of Hawaiʻi in 1989 when he became the first dean of the newly-established School. He undertook the task of establishing under one umbrella the research and teaching missions of several separate entities.

SOEST is home to the Pauley-Pagen Marine Lab at the Coconut Island-based Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology, and the International Pacific Research Center of Japan. Other research entities housed at SOEST include the Hawaiʻi Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, the Hawaiʻi Natural Energy Institute, the Hawaiʻi Undersea Research Laboratory and the UH Sea Grant program. The School was recently ranked third in the nation in competitively awarded grants from the National Science Foundation‘s Ocean Sciences Division.

Englert said he will decide this summer on interim leadership that will best maintain and increase UH Manoa research momentum in ocean and earth sciences.