Walter Jamieson, approved by the UH regents as the new dean Friday, is hoping his experience in Asia will help generate more exposure and money for the school internationally and locally.

"One of the things I can bring is leadership in helping the school to become a leader in the Asia-Pacific region," Jamieson said from Bangkok.

Jamieson has been working as a tourism consultant for UNESCO in Asia and the Pacific and serving as a visiting professor at the Institute for Tourism Studies in Macau, China. He has also led a Canadian International Development Agency project at the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok.

Jamieson said he hopes to bring about an understanding in the state of how Asia can serve as a source of tourists for Hawai'i and how world events, including terrorism, war and SARS, will change the tourism industry.

UH's strategic plan for the Asia-Pacific region helped push Jamieson ahead of the two other finalists for the position, James Burke and Stephen Smith.

Jamieson has a "phenomenal background" in the Asia-Pacific, said Pauline Sheldon, interim dean of the TIM school. "Of the three candidates, he was the only one that had that." About a quarter of TIM school students are international students, mostly from Asia, and another two-thirds are Hawai'i residents.

Jamieson's appointment was the culmination of an eight-month search for a new dean spurred by the 1999 resignation of Chuck Gee.

Gee led the TIM school for more than two decades as the school became internationally recognized for producing successful tourism industry managers employed worldwide. Sheldon has served as interim dean since Gee's retirement.

"Everybody in the faculty and the community was just anxious to see the school stabilize," Gee said. "Dr. Sheldon has done an excellent job, but three years in an interim position is just way too long."

Though Jamieson works in Asia, he has been with the University of Calgary in Alberta for 28 years. He is vice chairman of the World Tourism Education and Research Centre, and professor of planning and the director of an intern program in the Faculty of Environmental Design at the university. He will resign from Calgary to become dean at the TIM school with a three-year appointment starting Aug. 1, drawing a $145,000 annual salary.

The Montreal-born Jamieson, 58, speaks English and French. He has a bachelor's degree in sociology and a master's degree in environmental studies from York University in Toronto, a master's degree in environmental conservation from the Edinburgh College of Art/Heriott-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland, and a doctorate in urban and regional studies from the University of Birmingham in England.

He is moving to Hawai'i in late July with his wife, Delphine, who was born in Calcutta, and a 17-year-old daughter.

In Asia, Jamieson's research is focused in part on alleviating poverty through tourism. He is addressing the question of how the huge numbers of people living below the poverty line can benefit from a visitor industry, particularly in Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, southern China and Myanmar.

"As an industry we have a responsibility to ensure that tourism development actually leaves people in the country better off than before," Jamieson said.

He will move from that challenge to his next: raising money for the TIM school. It will be one of the most important tasks for the new dean given the university's strained resources and limited state budget.

"What we're really looking for is (for) him to bring in some substantial money for endowed professor chairs," Sheldon said. She said the school could use two to four new endowed chairs, which cost nearly $2 million each.

Jamieson said one of his priorities is to bring additional money into the school to relieve the heavy teaching loads of faculty members. He has fund-raising experience from running an outreach program at the University of Calgary.

But he said, "I don't have a strategy of how we're going to get the million-dollar gift that's going to provide us some financial security." Instead, his strategy is "to ensure that the mandate of the school can be met with existing resources as well as what we need to go and reach for."

He said he also wants to expand TIM school research by offering the direct benefits of such study to Hawai'i and international contributors.

"I don't go out and ask for handouts," Jamieson said. "What I want to be able to do is demonstrate that if we get the support, there will be direct benefit to those people as well as a wider benefit."

Jamieson was hesitant to talk about details of his long term plans for the TIM school, which was founded in 1966 and separated from the business school in 1991.

"Something I'm very nervous about is the instant expert," Jamieson said.

"You don't fool around with success and there's no doubt that the school has been successful. I would never go in with any grand plans to change things. ... Short term, my job is to listen and observe what's going on and over time try to encourage change."

But Jamieson did say he would like to see more faculty and students considered for travel research and consulting contracts and he wants to consider an expansion of distance education.

He said he is not an advocate of growing the student body of the TIM school, which has about 350 students, just for the sake of growing larger.

"I think some schools have really gotten into what I see as real difficulties when they've been growth driven, when the quality of life and nature of the learning experience have been diminished," Jamieson said. "If we could be convinced that a larger student body would provide us with resources that are not now available ... then I would certainly be supportive of that, but not simply to say that our numbers have grown."

Jamieson's background is in environmental studies and urban studies, and he said he can contribute ideas for sustainable tourism in Hawai'i.

"I see carrying capacity limits as being really important. How does that realization help to shape the product? I would see that as one of the issues out there," Jamieson said. "There's a growing awareness of impact on environment and impact on cultures."

He said he got started in the tourism industry through work in cultural preservation.

"One of the things that I bring to the position is an understanding of how indigenous cultures can be preserved and improved and enhanced through tourism," he said.

Jamieson said Hawai'i faces some important decisions in how to market tourism internationally.

"There's a whole new actor in the game and that's China with an incredibly growing middle class, where it's now becoming an economic power," he said.

"There are very clear indications that the Japanese economy is in trouble. I think it's always dangerous to be reliant on one market source, but I certainly wouldn't dismiss it."

University and tourism leaders say they are looking forward to the arrival of the new dean.

Rex Johnson, the Hawai'i Tourism Authority executive director who was involved in Jamieson's interview, called the new dean "an outstanding candidate."

Lawrence Foster, outgoing dean of the law school and chairman of the TIM school dean search committee, said Jamieson was chosen because of his strong academic background and work with the tourism industry.

"A lot of people saw this as a great opportunity to move up in the world and come to the UH TIM school," Foster said. "I think (Jamieson) brings a lot of excitement to the program."