NEW YORK, Feb. 28 (Xinhua) -- Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger has announced the appointment of Michele M. Moody-Adams as the new dean of Columbia College, the first black and also the first woman to serve the post.

    According to a report available on the university's website Saturday, Moody-Adams comes to Columbia from Cornell University, where, since 2000, she has been the Hutchinson professor and director of the Program on Ethics and Public Life, and has served for the past four years as Cornell's vice provost for undergraduate education.

    Moody-Adams succeeds retiring Columbia College Dean Austin E. Quigley. Her appointment begins July 1.

    "Professor Moody-Adams' extraordinary commitment to teaching, scholarship and public service, as well as her hands-on experience as an academic administrator for undergraduate education, make her uniquely well suited to this new challenge," Bollinger was cited as saying.

    According to the report, Moody-Adams is an accomplished scholar and academic administrator who has taught at Cornell, Indiana University, the University of Rochester and Wellesley College. She has produced an extensive body of work in moral philosophy. Her 1997 book, "Fieldwork in Familiar Places: Morality, Culture, and Philosophy," has been widely praised as "a major contribution to moral philosophy."

    She has written and lectured extensively throughout the United States and abroad on a wide range of timely public issues. As an administrator, she has been responsible for ensuring the integrity and coherence of undergraduate curriculum and instruction at Cornell and overseeing a number of academic and residential initiatives. Before that, she was a professor and associate dean for undergraduate education in the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University, Bloomington.