UTC Welcomes Dr. John Friedl

Dr. John Friedl and his wife, Sylvia

"I am very excited to be here," Friedl told a gathering of University faculty and staff on the portico of the UTC Lupton Library. "At the core of the University is its faculty. At the University of South Alabama, I always say I am first and foremost a faculty member who happens to be a dean. At UTC, I will be first and foremost a faculty member who happens to be provost," Friedl said.

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate in anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley, Friedl also earned a M.A. and Ph.D. at Berkeley. He went on to earn a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School and M.P.H. from the University of Michigan School of Public Health.

Friedl comes to UTC with a great depth of experience. Prior to joining USA in 2000, Friedl was director of the Center for Legal Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences and Director of Graduate Studies for the Law School at Wayne State University, where he held the rank of professor of anthropology and associate professor of law. In 1996-97, he was an American Council on Education Fellow in the President‚s Office at Western Michigan University.

From 1984 thru 1993, Friedl worked as an attorney, specializing in corporate law, commercial litigation, and trademark and intellectual property law. He was the first full-time Executive Director of the Seva Foundation, an international nonprofit public health organization headquartered in Chelsea, Michigan. In 1981-82, Friedl investigated ethnic group differences in survival rates among cancer patients as a Visiting Fellow at the Behavioral Medicine Branch of the National Cancer Institute. He was a full-time faculty member in anthropology at Ohio State University, 1971-82.

The author of seven volumes, including three volumes of The Human Portrait: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, and numerous journal articles and book chapters, Friedl is internationally renowned as a scholar in the anthropology, law, public health policy.