Administration
To address the needs of Sacramento area students and employers and to offer the best in leadership education and services, Drexel University has chosen some of its best administrators, along with a world-class faculty. Meet the Center's key leaders:
Carl "Tobey" Oxholm III
Dean and Chief Executive Officer
Since joining Drexel University in 2001 as General Counsel, Tobey Oxholm has played a key role in Drexel's major innovations including Drexel e-Learning Inc., the University's online learning subsidiary; the acquisition of MCP Hahnemann University, now Drexel University College of Medicine; the development of a nationally respected health care dispute mediation program and captive professional liability insurance company, Schuylkill Crossing Reciprocal Risk Retention Group; and the creation of the Earle Mack School of Law, which achieved provisional accreditation from the American Bar Association earlier this year in the shortest possible time. In his most recent position as Drexel's executive vice president, Tobey Oxholm led the development effort of the Center for Graduate Studies in Sacramento.
Prior to joining Drexel, Oxholm was a practicing attorney in Philadelphia for 22 years, at major firms and in the City's Law Department as Chief Deputy City Solicitor. He has been a leader in community service among the region's lawyers, helping to create three pro bono projects that have become national models—the Philadelphia Volunteers for the Indigent Program, the Homeless Advocacy Project and the Consumer Bankruptcy Assistance Project—and winning many awards, including the American Bar Association's "Pro Bono Publico" Award for exemplary public service.
A 1979 cum laude graduate of Harvard University Law School, Oxholm received his master's degree in public policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. He graduated summa cum laude from Amherst College in 1975 with a bachelor of arts degree, Phi Beta Kappa.
Nancy Thompson
Director of Recruitment
A native of California, Nancy Thompson received her Bachelor of Science from the University of California Davis. She has dedicated herself to motivating professionals in advancing their careers through education for more than 10 years in the Sacramento Region. Before joining Drexel in January 2009 she was instrumental in the planning and execution of opening a San Francisco Bay Area site for the highly successful Working Professional MBA program at the Graduate School of Management at UC Davis. As director for the Graduate External Programs at California State University, Sacramento she was responsible for the management and growth of multiple programs.
John M. Morris
Chief Technical Officer, Director of Operations
John M. Morris holds bi-coastal positions within Drexel University. In addition to his role as CTO in Sacramento, he also serves as Director of Academic Technology Innovation in Philadelphia. After more than 15 years in as a tenured professor of architecture and architectural engineering at various universities including Tulane, University of Kansas, and The University of Michigan, he joined Drexel University in 1992 as Director of the Architectural Engineering Program. He was responsible for the development of Drexel's first fully online courses and the first high tech highly interactive classroom, and served to institutionalize web-based education and technology use in the classroom.
Specializing in appropriate use of technology in education and the development of "Best Practices" he designed the high tech classrooms in Drexel's Korman Computing Center and extended those designs to the Sacramento campus. His Philadelphia based Web Group is responsible for DragonDrop, an award winning nationally recognized web-based content capture and deployment software application. In California he was responsible for the implementation of all of the Center's technology and is now manages the day-to-day operations of the Graduate Studies facility.