Trustees ratify appointments, approve degree program and resolutions of appreciation
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — The Purdue University Board of Trustees on Friday (Sept. 30) ratified the appointment of two distinguished professors and a named professor and approved a bachelor of science with a major in information technology program at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne.
Trustees also approved resolutions of appreciation for two administrators and ratified the appointment of a dean for the Krannert School of Management.
The board ratified Rebecca W. Doerge as the Trent and Judith Anderson Distinguished Professor of Statistics, Mary Jean Wirth as the W. Brooks Fortune Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Norman A. Faiola as the White Lodging Services Center Professor of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Purdue University Calumet.
Doerge is head of the Department of Statistics and a professor in statistics and agronomy. She also is director of Purdue's Statistical Bioinformatics Center.
Her main area of research is statistical bioinformatics, which brings together many scientific disciplines to help understand the function and control of DNA. A fellow of the American Statistical Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, she won the Provost's Award for Outstanding Graduate Faculty Mentor in 2010. She also currently serves as an associate editor for the journals Genetics Research, Epigenomics and G3: Genes-Genomes-Genetics.
Doerge, who has been at Purdue since 1995, received her bachelor's and master's degrees in mathematics from the University of Utah and her doctorate in statistics from North Carolina State University. She previously was a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University.
Wirth is one of three Purdue alumnae who earlier this year were named the university's inaugural Distinguished Women Scholars. Her research focus is the separation and isolation of biomarker candidates in blood for early detection of cancer, and her teaching focus relates the principles of chemistry to current issues in the real world.
She has received the ANACHEM Award, the Gold Medal Award in analytical spectroscopy and the Spectrochemical Analysis Award of the ACS Division of Analytical Chemistry. Wirth also has been named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
She received her bachelor's degree in chemistry from Northern Illinois University and a doctorate in chemistry from Purdue in 1978. Since then, she has taught at the University of Wisconsin, University of Delaware and University of Arizona. She also worked as a research scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and was the founder of bioVidria before returning to Purdue as a faculty member in 2009.
Faiola is a professor of hospitality and tourism management at Purdue University Calumet. Before coming to Purdue Calumet this fall, he was chair of the Department of Hospitality Management in the College of Human Ecology at Syracuse University. He also was an associate dean of the college and had served as professor and chair of the Department of Nutrition and Hospitality Management at Syracuse.
He was the highest royalty producing faculty member at Syracuse before leaving. In 1991 Faiola received a patent for the Rapi-Kool, a device that rapidly cools food to help prevent the growth of bacteria that causes foodborne illness. He developed a wireless temperature monitoring system for refrigeration, hot holding and cooking equipment in 1991.
He received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Cornell University and his doctorate from Syracuse University.
In other business, trustees also approved a bachelor of science degree with a major in information technology at IPFW. The program, expected to begin in fall 2012, will prepare graduates for careers in information technology.
Career opportunities in the field are excellent, said Timothy D. Sands, executive vice president for academic affairs and provost. He noted the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' table of 30 occupations with fastest employment growth includes two in which an IT program graduate may compete.
Sands said enrollment in the program is projected to be three full-time and eight part-time students in the first year, increasing to 12 full-time students and 28 part-time students in the fifth year. No new state funding will be requested for the program, and it does not require Indiana Commission for Higher Education approval.
Trustees also approved resolutions of appreciation for Richard Cosier and Jerry Lynch. The resolution for Cosier also gives him the title of dean emeritus of the Krannert School of Management.
Cosier was dean of the Krannert School from 1999 to 2010. He now is the Avrum and Joyce Gray Director of the Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship and the Leeds Professor of Management. Cosier joined Purdue in 1999 after appointments with the University of Oklahoma, Indiana University and the University of Notre Dame. During his tenure as dean, Business Week and U.S.News & World Report consistently ranked Krannert among the world's top business programs.
Cosier also helped shepherd the creation and completion of Rawls Hall in 2003 through a $10 million gift from alumnus Jerry S. Rawls. In 2008 he served as chair of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), the highly respected international accreditation organization for business schools.
Lynch, a professor of economics and academic director of the master's and executive programs at the Krannert School, has served as interim dean since July 2010. Lynch, who has been at Purdue since 1982, also was associate dean for programs and student services and was associate dean of
the German International School of Management and Administration, Krannert's international outreach MBA program in Hanover, Germany. His areas of specialty are monetary theory and policy, macroeconomics, and international trade and finance.
In other business, trustees ratified the appointment of P. Christopher Earley as dean of the Krannert School. Earley, who is scheduled to start his new position on Nov. 1, comes to Purdue from the University of Connecticut, where he is currently dean of the Business School and the Auran J. Fox Chair in Business. Prior to that, he was dean of the National University of Singapore Business School, chair of organizational behavior at London Business School in England, and Randall L. Tobias Chair of Global Leadership at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business.
Writer: Greg McClure, 765-496-9711, gmcclure@purdue.edu
Sources: Timothy Sands, 765-494-9709, tsands@purdue.edu
Rebecca Doerge, 765-494-3141, doerge@purdue.edu
Mary Jean Wirth, 765-494-5328, mwirth@purdue.edu
Norman A. Faiola, Norman.Faiola@purduecal.edu
Susan Alderman, IPFW media director, 260-481-6165, aldermas@ipfw.edu
Jerry Lynch, 765-494-4388, lynch@purdue.edu
Richard Cosier, 765-494-4366, rcosier@purdue.edu
P. Christopher Earley, pcearley@purdue.edu