Lawrence Martin serves as Dean of the Graduate School (1993 to present) and Director of International Programs (1996 to present) at SUNY at Stony Brook. He is a physical anthropologist who studies the evolution of apes and the origin of humans. He received his Ph.D. in anthropology from University College London in 1983, after which he was a postdoctoral fellow in anatomy at University College London until 1985. In 1985 he joined the faculty of SUNY at Stony Brook as an assistant professor in the Departments of Anthropology and Anatomical Sciences. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1990 and to Professor in 1996. Lawrence served as Director of Undergraduate Studies and Director of the Doctoral Program in Anthropological Sciences before his appointment as Dean of the Graduate School in 1993.
Lawrence is interested in the relationship between faculty productivity and the reputation of graduate programs. He has analyzed the faculty productivity data from the 1995 NRC study titled Research Doctorate Programs in the United States to determine which variables serve as useful predictors of a program’s reputation. The results of this work have been presented at meetings of the Council of Graduate Schools, NASULGC’S Council on Research Policy and Graduate Education, and to the Executive Committee of the Office of Science and Engineering Personnel of the National Research Council. Lawrence has organized several CGS and CRPGE sessions on the subject of assessing the quality of graduate programs.
Lawrence served on a SUNY Performance Indicators Task Force that developed recommendations for performance indicators and merit-based performance funding for the State University of New York and chaired the Faculty Productivity subcommittee of that group. He is currently serving as a member of the New York State Department of Education’s Task Force on Outcomes Assessment and Institutional Effectiveness and a member of the “Indicators” subcommittee of that group. Lawrence serves as a member of the Commissioner’s Doctoral Council (The State Education Department/The University of the State of New York), the Executive Committee of the Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools Executive Committee, and the Council on Research Policy and Graduate Education (NASULGC) and is president-elect of the Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools. He recently served as chair of the Committee of Visitors to review the archaeology, cultural anthropology, geography and regional sciences, and physical anthropology programs at the National Science Foundation under the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA).
Lawrence’s work in physical anthropology has involved paleontological fieldwork in Cameroon, Kenya, Pakistan, and Turkey as well as laboratory research on the microscopic development of dental enamel and has been funded by the L.S.B. Leakey Foundation and the National Science Foundation. His anthropological research interests focus on species definition in living primates and species recognition in fossil primates, evolution of apes and humans, and microstructure and development of dental enamel in primates. He has coedited four books and published more than sixty papers and abstracts.