Sheryl B. Ball of Blacksburg, Va., associate professor of economics in the College of Science at Virginia Tech, has been named the College of Science's associate dean for curriculum, instruction, and advising.

As associate dean, Ball will provide leadership for curricular development, developing a process for awarding scholarships that involves faculty, alumni, and donors and keeps departments informed, heading up recruiting and placement programs, representing the college on university committees in the fields of curriculum, instruction, and advising, and managing the office of student records, advising, and career planning.

Ball received a bachelor's degree, master's degree and Ph.D. from Northwestern University. She joined the faculty at Virginia Tech in 1992 and was promoted to associate professor in 1999. Prior to that, she served as assistant professor at the Boston University School of Management. She also served as a visiting scholar at IMF Institute. She has received Virginia Tech's Alumni Advising Award and the Certificate of Teaching Excellence.

Ball's research falls into three major areas: individual decision making, experimental economics, and game theory. She has published in professional journals, and her work has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institute for Dispute Resolution (NIDR). For the NSF grant, she and co-principal investigator Catherine Eckel examined whether the outcomes of economic environments such as markets or negotiations are influenced by participants' social status. With another grant, she and co-principal investigators Eckel and Scott Midkiff are developing and testing a wireless teaching system to facilitate active learning in large lecture courses. The NIDR grants supported work on negotiations concerning environmental issues and Ball's dissertation research on the winner's curse.

Ball is a member of Virginia Tech's Center for Wireless Telecommunication. She served as strategist and bidder for Virginia Tech in the FCC Local Multipoint Distribution Services auction, designing the university's bidding strategy and getting it approved before the auction. The result was the acquisition of four licenses for university research on LMDS service. She also was a co-principal investigator on a research contract on bidding for satellite spectrum auctions for Hughes Telecommunications and Space.

Ball is a member of the American Economic Association, the Committee for the Status of Women in the Economics Profession, the Economic Science Association, and the Society for the Advancement of Behavior Economics. She is a native of St. Louis, Mo.

The College of Science at Virginia Tech gives students a comprehensive foundation in the scientific method. Outstanding faculty members teach courses and conduct research in biology, chemistry, economics, geosciences, mathematics, physics, psychology, and statistics. The college is dedicated to fostering a research intensive environment and offers programs in nano-scale and biological sciences, information theory and science, and supports research centers—in areas such as biomedical and public health sciences, and critical technology and applied science—that encompass other colleges at the university. The College of Science also houses programs in pre-medicine and scientific law.

Founded in 1872 as a land-grant college, Virginia Tech has grown to become the largest university in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Today, Virginia Tech's eight colleges are dedicated to putting knowledge to work through teaching, research, and outreach activities and to fulfilling its vision to be among the top 30 research universities in the nation. At its 2,600-acre main campus located in Blacksburg and other campus centers in Northern Virginia, Southwest Virginia, Hampton Roads, Richmond, and Roanoke, Virginia Tech enrolls more than 28,000 full- and part-time undergraduate and graduate students from all 50 states and more than 100 countries in 170 academic degree programs.

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