THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release August 3, 1993
PRESIDENT NAMES CHATER COMMISSIONER OF SOCIAL SECURITY;
VARMUS TO BE N.I.H. DIRECTOR
President Clinton announced his intention today to nominate
Texas Woman's University President Shirley Chater to be the Commissioner of Social Security and Nobel laureate Harold Varmus to be the Director of the National Institutes of Health.
"It gives me great pleasure to announce these nominations today," said the President. "Shirley Chater is an accomplished administrator with a strong background in health care issues. I am convinced that she will do an outstanding job of running this enormous, and enormously important, agency. Likewise, as one of the world's leading medical researchers, Harold Varmus will bring great strength and leadership to the National Institutes of Health."
Shirley Chater has been the President of Texas Women's University since 1986. She was previously a Senior Associate for President Search Consultation Services at the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges from 1984-86. For two years before that, she was with the American Council on Education's Division of Academic Affairs and Institutional Relations. From 1964-82, she worked in academic and administrative positions at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, San Francisco.
In addition, Chater, a nurse by training, has been heavily involved in a number of public service efforts, particularly relating to health care. From 1991-93, she served as Chair of the Texas Health Policy Task Force appointed by Governor Ann Richards, and she currently serves on the Board of Director of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and the Leadership America National Advisory Committee. She is also on the Advisory Committee of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation's National Fellowship Program, and on the Boards of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the United Educators Risk Retention Group, and her local United Way chapter and Chamber of Commerce.
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Chater holds a B.S. from the University of Pennsylvania, M.S. from the University of California, San Francisco, and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. She also holds a certificate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Program for Senior Executives.
Harold Varmus, recipient of the 1989 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology, has taught at the University of California Medical Center in San Francisco since 1970. He currently holds the American Cancer Society Professorship in Molecular Virology, and teaches in two departments: Microbiology and Immunology; and Biochemistry and Biophysics. He also serves on the editorial boards of several scholarly publications, and on various review boards and commissions. He has served as a consultant to pharmaceutical corporations, advisor to the Congressional Caucus for Biomedical Research, and Chairman of the National Research Council's Board on Biology.
Varmus, 53, holds a B.A. from Amherst College, M.A. from Harvard University, and M.D. from Columbia University. He did his internship in medicine at Presbyterian Hospital in New York, where he was also an Assistant Resident. He was a Clinical Associate at the National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases, a part of N.I.H., from 1974-79. He served in the U.S. Public Health Service from 1968-70.
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THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release August 3, 1993
OFFICIALS NAMED TO AIR FORCE SPACE POLICY POST;
MEDIATION AND MERIT SYSTEMS BOARDS
President Clinton today announced his intention to nominate Robert Fossum to be the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Policy, Ernest Dubester to be a member of the National Mediation Board. He also announced that he has designated Jessica L. Parks, as Vice Chair of the Merit Systems Protection Board. Parks has been a member of the Board since May 17, 1990.
Robert Fussom a former Naval officer and Director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is a Professor of Electrical Engineering at Southern Methodist University. He was previously SMU's Dean of Electrical and Applied Science, a position he entered after his service at DARPA from 1977-81. Prior to that he had been Dean of Science and Engineering at the Naval Postgraduate School for four years, and had worked in the private sector as Vice President of ESL Incorporated. Among his other activities, he currently serves as Trustee of Aerospace Corporation and of the Southwest Research Institute, and is a Member of the Corporation of Draper Laboratory. Fussom holds B.S. from the University of Idaho, and an M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Oregon. He served on active duty as a Navy Lieutenant from 1951-54, and was a Marine Corps Private in 1946- 47. He is 64 years old.
Ernest Dubester is the Legislative Counsel of the AFL-CIO, a position he has held since 1984, and served on the Transportation Cluster Group of the Clinton/Gore Transition. At the AFL-CIO, he had specific responsibility for labor and transportation issues. From 1981-84, he had been with the law firm of Highsaw & Mahoney, representing airline and railway unions, among others in labor relations, legislative, administrative, and civil rights matters. From 1975-81, he worked at the National Labor Relations Board, serving for most of that period as counsel to Chairman John Fanning. Dubester holds an A.B. from Boston College, J.D. from the Catholic University of America, and LL.M. from Georgetown University Law School.
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