ADVANCE - Purdue and the Center for Faculty Success

Woman of Distinction:
Dr. Patrice Buzzanell

Dr. Patrice Buzzanell is a woman whose mission in both her professional and personal life is the promotion of racial and gender equality. As a distinguished professor in the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University, Patrice’s entire research program, including courses taught and publications over the course of her 30-year career, has been devoted to the attainment of social, racial, and gender change in diverse contexts such as workplaces, schools, families and the global marketplace. Patrice has won over 40 awards and honors and published over 50 articles in the areas of gender and communication. She has also published 3 books. In 2010, she was awarded the Helen B. Schleman Gold Medallion award. She currently serves on the International Communication Association and Council of Communication Associations.

Since 2000, Patrice has been a faculty team advisor to one or more of the EPICS (Engineering Projects in Community Service) teams each semester. These teams do various projects in the Lafayette Community that each serves a distinct purpose. Through her work with EPICS, Patrice directly impacts many of the students she encounters, but additionally, she creates in her students a sense of importance of community service that is carried on by those students in countless ways after graduation.

Patrice’s approach to organizing and problem solving has allowed her research to achieve its practical promise. She has consulted with organizations about diversity issues, working with organizational leaders and employees to develop strategies and policies that promote diversity and enact diversity in the workplace. She is internationally recognized as a leading scholar on issues around gender and communication and has won numerous awards for research that has looked at women in engineering in global contexts, academic caregiving and maternity leave policies and practices.

Through her spirit of small acts, moments of kindness and constant conversations about issues of gender, Patrice truly changes the community one person, one class, and one EPICS project at a time.