Michael Bullis is the first to admit that he wouldn’t have picked his own job, let alone his career path. Growing up in West Lafayette, Ind., he never expected to earn a doctorate much less to serve as the dean of the eighth ranked public education college in the nation.
Nevertheless, on Sept. 1 of this year he became the Dean of the College of Education, a position he will hold for two years.
“Being asked to be the dean was something I was scared to death of, for a variety of reasons, and something I’m glad I can do.” he said. “Timing is everything in life. If they’d come to me five years ago to do this, I wouldn’t have been able to do it because of the different grant commitments I had.”
Bullis, who has spent his career as a teacher and researcher, served as the interim dean last year after the current dean was reassigned. The University administration asked Bullis to assume the duties and began a national search for a new dean last spring.
Bullis did not apply for the spot, but after the candidate who was offered the position turned it down this summer, University Provost Linda Brady asked him to continue as dean for the next two years.
While Bullis said he never envisioned himself working as an administrator, he said that when the opportunity arose, he was at a place where it made sense to try something new.
“I felt I was at a point in my career where several projects were ending,” he said. “I feel an incredible loyalty to the University and the college. I never in a million years thought I would earn a Ph.D., ever. And if you ask 50 people who knew me when I was a kid, they would say the same thing. In fact, a lot of my friends are still mystified. ‘You’re doing what?’”
Bullis’ hometown, where his father worked as a business manager after serving in the Korean War, is also the home of Purdue University where he would earn both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees. After graduating Bullis worked as a rehabilitation counselor from 1975 to 1979 before returning to school.
He earned his Ph.D. in Special Education and Rehabilitation from the University of Oregon in 1983. Bullis said the time working on his Ph.D. was the last time he “really felt like a kid,” riding his bike to class wearing jeans and T-shirts. He remembered a professor introducing him to a fellow student named Cathy who happened to be standing around talking during class.
“I think of how we used to walk around campus and meet down at Hilyard Street Market or go to the library to study,” he said.
Cathy later became Bullis’ wife and is currently a psychologist for the Corvallis school district. The couple has lived in Corvallis since 1984, when Bullis began working at Western Oregon University. He said he has always liked Corvallis because it reminds him of West Lafayette.
After earning his Ph.D., Bullis worked in Little Rock, Ark., and at Western Oregon and returned to the University as a faculty member in 1994.
In Spring 2005, he was named a Sommerville-Knight endowed professor, a position offered only to professors who are highly respected in their fields.
Sommerville-Knight professors are given an endowment on top of their regular salaries. The extra money can be used in any way and Bullis has used a good portion of his endowment to fund the National Post-School Outcomes Center, which he directs.
The NPSO, which is part of the College of Education, works with the departments of education in every state and 10 U.S. “federal jurisdictions,” including the Bureau of Indian Affairs, to track the progress of teenagers with disabilities after they leave high school. This type of long-term studying is what Bullis has done for most of his career, focused on helping people with disabilities find jobs.
Bullis said that while he is unsure if he will apply for the position when the search for a new dean resumes in the spring of next year because he misses writing, research and teaching, being named dean is “an honor and humbling.”
“It’s fairly astonishing that when I’m done I get my picture up on the wall with all those other old guys,” he said.
He said his goals for the College of Education are to continue the standard of excellence at the college and be engaged with the community.
“Our job as the college is to educate students to become teachers, social service providers, social-science researchers, educational researchers. Because of that, we have to try and connect with the community,” he said. ” I think it’s important that the college is viewed as a piece of society.”
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