Hello to everyone!  I have enjoyed reading your introductions and
finally have a spare moment to write mine.

I am the Founding Dean of the Graduate School at Bellarmine University
In Louisville, Kentucky, USA.  Although we have had graduate programs
for a number of years, we just founded the Graduate School on June 1,
2006.  As you can guess, I'm swamped with administrative duties right
now and my research is on the back burner for at least a few more weeks
until things calm down.  This is also our SACS reaffirmation years so I
may be dreaming.  

Prior to taking on the Deanship, I was a professor of marketing here.
Bellarmine is a small school and I have been somewhat of a marketing
generalist in terms of both teaching and research.  We achieved AACSB
accreditation just under two years ago with a very small faculty.  Thus,
we did a lot of co-authoring outside of our main research streams in
order to get the numbers of articles we needed for accreditation.

Going forward, my primary interest is in the area of food marketing with
a social marketing/public policy twist.  I'm interested in locally grown
food, farmers markets, nutrition education, cooking classes for those
who are poor so that they can better stretch a dollar, the nutritional
value of food served in schools and restaurants, portion sizes in
restaurants, obesity,  inner city youth gardens, food safety, etc.   Oh,
I'm also interested in chocolate, but I haven't figured out how to work
it into my research agenda yet.

I look forward to meeting more of you electronically and hope to meet
some of you in person in the future.  
  
Julie

Julie F. Toner, Ph.D.
Dean, Graduate School
Bellarmine University
2001 Newburg Road
Louisville, KY 40241
502.452.8181/502.452.8162 (FAX)
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