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Allison Danell’s entire family was out of town – her oldest child away for college, her husband with the youngest child on a ski trip – when she learned of NCSSM’s search for a new Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Programs.
For the last 22 years, Danell had been at East Carolina University, first as a chemistry professor and researcher for 15 years before becoming dean of the Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences. But with her youngest child about to graduate from high school, the timing seemed right to begin considering opportunities for a new challenge in a new place that would build upon her previous positions. But she was in no rush. She was established and succeeding in her current role, so it would take a truly unique opportunity for her to trade in what she had.
The opening at NCSSM seemed just that opportunity.
“Immediately, I got quite excited when I saw the job posting,” says Danell, who became NCSSM’s newest provost on Aug. 3. “I’ve been very, very choosy about any opportunities I considered, and I didn’t consider more than a handful, and this one was at the top of my list.”
It was top of the list for two reasons. One, a provost position was the natural next step in Danell’s career. And two, she already had full confidence in NCSSM’s mission; her oldest child graduated from NCSSM in 2021.
As an NCSSM parent, Danell saw how the school functioned academically, and it reminded her so much of university life. She’d seen it in the rigor of the work students were engaging in. She’d seen it in the expectations that faculty and staff set for the students. And she’d seen it in the confidence the faculty had in students’ ability to rise to that challenge.
“I developed very quickly a lot of respect for the faculty,” she says, “recognized quickly that they often have university teaching experience and the same credentials that I had earned myself, and that they were really offering a lot to their students.”
And so, intrigued by the open position, and with a rare weekend to herself to focus uninterrupted, Danell put her application package together, loaded it up in the system, and hit send.
“I was really anxious to see if I would get a call,” she says.
A few weeks later, she did.
Clarity in Scandinavia
In the summer before Danell’s senior year of college, while she was in Norway on a one-month study abroad trip to study environmental chemistry, things suddenly became clear to her. She’d started college at Truman State University, a small school in northeastern Missouri, intending to major in math and become a high school math teacher. But to earn that degree, she first had to complete a biology, physics, and chemistry course.
Surprisingly, the chemistry course resonated. She found in the various fields of chemistry many of the things she loved about math – mathematical visioning, precision, pattern, the rewards of accurate work.
“I like order, I like finding patterns, and when things fall into place, I find it really satisfying,” Danell says. “That, I think, is why I like chemistry so much.”
She liked it so much that she got involved in undergraduate research and, eventually, signed up for the research trip to Norway, her first trip out of the country.
And that’s where, in the chemistry labs in Bergen, in urban areas around the city, and in the rugged mountainous areas around the country’s iconic fjords, it all began to make the most sense to her.
“I recognized that there were these commonalities,” Danell says. “Science is like this universal language. None of us spoke Norwegian, but a lot of the symbols and the record keeping and the experiment design was very familiar. It was really similar, and so that was really reassuring to me.”
Steady path forward
Upon her return to Truman, Danell’s chemistry professors encouraged her to remain in the discipline, and to consider a career in academia. She further immersed herself in research and did not look up again until she had earned a PhD in chemistry from UNC-Chapel Hill. A postdoctoral fellowship at Rowland Institute at Harvard soon followed. Then came ECU. Along the way she mentored undergraduate and graduate students, presented and published research results nationally and internationally, and secured a patent for a potential chemotherapeutic agent.
Moving away from a home in the classroom and labs to a home in the administrative suite of offices was bittersweet in many ways for Danell, but so much of what she loved about the teaching – spending time with people, delivering accurate and orderly information, setting a path forward that helps people succeed – she found in her role as an administrator.
Now NCSSM has the good fortune of having Danell on its team. And she is ready.
“I’m excited to contribute to the teams at NCSSM in a way that I hope is genuine and helpful and motivating,” Danell says. “I really enjoy reminding people what they’re capable of and then helping them reach those goals. I’m excited about what comes next for all of us, honestly.”
