Folt named professor in Gillings School’s environmental sciences and engineering department
October 24, 2014
Carol Folt, PhD, chancellor of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has received joint appointments as professor in the College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Biology and in the Gillings School of Global Public Health’s Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering.
“We are very pleased to welcome Chancellor Folt to our faculty,” said Michael Aitken, PhD, professor and chair of environmental sciences and engineering. “She is an outstanding scientist who has worked on water quality issues her entire career, and her recent work on exposure of human populations to toxic metals such as mercury and arsenic is particularly relevant to the Gillings School’s mission.”
Dean Barbara K. Rimer echoed Aitken’s enthusiasm, saying that Folt is an exemplary scientist, teacher and leader.
“That combination is inspirational, and we are so grateful that she chose to affiliate with our School,” Rimer said.
Folt received baccalaureate and master’s degrees in biology from the University of California – Santa Barbara, and a doctorate in ecology from the University of California at Davis. She conducted postdoctoral research at the W.K. Kellogg Biological Station at Michigan State University before beginning her academic career at Dartmouth University in 1983. She was named associate director of Dartmouth’s Toxic Metals Research Program in 1998, and two years later, became associate director of Dartmouth’s Center for Environmental Health Sciences.
In 2007, Folt was awarded an endowed professorship, The Dartmouth Professor of Biological Sciences. In 2010, she was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She served as associate director of Dartmouth’s Superfund Research Program and the Children’s Environmental Health Center at Dartmouth, both of which are supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
In addition to her faculty appointments, Folt served at the highest administrative levels at Dartmouth, including as dean of graduate studies, dean of faculty, provost and interim president, before being named UNC Chancellor in 2013.