System Vice President of Academic Affairs
Dr. O. Joseph (Joe) Harm, III has served as South University’s System Vice President for Academic Affairs since June 2005. In this capacity, he is responsible for all academic, and many operational, programmatic, and personnel matters across the University’s six-campus, 14000-student system, including online. He serves as the University’s SACS accreditation liaison and as a SACS on-site evaluator. He directed the 2006 SACS Compliance Certification submission, which resulted in a full 10-year reaffirmation for South University.
During 2006-2007, in addition to his duties at South University, he served as Interim University Vice President for Academic Affairs for Argosy University, an 18-campus EDMC educational system headquartered in Chicago. He was also the HLC (North Central) Liaison for Argosy through several successful site visits and successful system re-accreditation for seven years.
Dr. Harm holds the title of Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of South Carolina Aiken, where he served in a variety of capacities from 1974 to 2005. His administrative positions included Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, Co-director of the SACS Self-Study, Director of Planning and Institutional Research, and Chair of the Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences. After completing his administrative roles, he was elected twice by his colleagues as Chair of the Faculty and chaired many university committees.
Specializing in cognition, human memory and statistics, he was a full professor in the University’s Department of Psychology. He was also a member of a number of University of South Carolina system-wide committees and task forces, including the Minority Recruitment Committee for the S.C. Desegregation Plan and the USC System Institutional Review Board, responsible for oversight of all University research involving human subjects.
A former chair of the Aiken County Mental Health Board, he also served as a member (gubernatorial appointment) of the State of S.C. Health Planning Committee with oversight for healthcare facilities in the state. Dr. Harm holds a B.S. degree in psychology, with honors, from Trinity College (Hartford, Ct.) and a Ph.D. in general-experimental psychology from Vanderbilt University.