Porus Olpadwala, professor and chair of the Department of City and Regional Planning (CRP) at Cornell University, has been named interim dean of the College of Architecture, Art and Planning effective July 1. The appointment was made by Cornell Provost Don M. Randel.

Olpadwala succeeds Anthony Vidler, who will return to University of California at Los Angeles after serving as dean since Jan. 1, 1997.

"As we vigorously pursue new leadership for the college along with plans for renewed facilities and growing strength for the college's programs, we are fortunate to have many talented people and considerable resources in the college for these purposes," Randel noted. "We are especially fortunate that Professor Porus Olpadwala of the Department of City and Regional Planning has agreed to serve as interim dean for the coming year."

Olpadwala has been chair of CRP since 1994. He also is chair of the university's A.D. White Professors-at-Large Program. His previous administrative responsibilities include graduate field representative for city and regional planning (1990-92) and for international development (1986-87) and director of the Program on International Studies in Planning (1982-91). In 1972-73 he was assistant to the vice president of administration at Cornell. During a business career in Calcutta, India, through the 1960s, Olpadwala worked with Price Waterhouse and the Indian subsidiary of Jardine Mathesen, a multinational group of 8 core businesses -- financial services, supermarkets, consumer marketing, engineering and construction, motor trading, property and hotels -- focused primarily on Asia.

Olpadwala has earned three graduate degrees from Cornell: an M.B.A. (1972), M.R.P. (1976) and a Ph.D. (1979). He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Calcutta in 1962. He has taught and published in the areas of political economy, international development planning and the urban environment and has been a consultant to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, USAID and the Ford Foundation. He now is working with IBM on an eco-industrial study related to the ecological disposal of spent computers.