Five faculty named fellows for Big Ten Academic Alliance Academic Leadership Program

The Office of the Provost has selected five faculty members to participate in the Big Ten Academic Alliance Academic Leadership Program during the 2016-17 academic year. The Big Ten Academic Alliance is a consortium of the Big Ten member universities.

The Big Ten Academic Alliance-ALP is designed to develop the leadership and managerial skills of faculty who have demonstrated exceptional ability and administrative promise. It is specifically oriented to the challenges of academic administration of major research universities and to the preparation of faculty members to meet those challenges. 

The fellows for this year are: 

* Emily Allen is associate dean for academic affairs for Purdue's Honors College, a position that allows her to work with undergraduates from all over the University. She is also associate professor in the Department of English, where her primary scholarly area is 19th-century British literature and culture, particularly the novel. Her first book, "Theater Figures: The Production of the Nineteenth-Century British Novel" (The Ohio State UP), examined the fraught but also enabling relationship among theatrical and novelistic forms over the course of the 19th century and in response to shifting cultural markets. She is affiliated with the programs for comparative literature, women's studies, and theory and cultural studies. Allen received her BA (honors) from UCLA, and her MA (honors) and PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She held an Isaac Walton Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship at Dalhousie University before arriving at Purdue in 1997. She has received numerous awards for her teaching, including the Charles B. Murphy Award in Undergraduate Teaching, Purdue's highest honor. She is a member of Purdue's Teaching Academy, and in 2008, her name was inscribed in Purdue's Book of Great Teachers.

* William A. (Bill) Crossley is a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Purdue, where he has been a member of the faculty since August 1995. His teaching and research interests are in design optimization for aerospace systems and for system-of-system design problems. He has received numerous teaching awards at the school level. He received the College of Engineering A.A. Potter Best of Engineering Teaching Award in 2007. He was inducted into the Purdue University Book of Great Teachers in 2013. Crossley is an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and recently served as chair of the Aircraft Design Technical Committee. He is an Executive Committee member for the Council of Engineering Systems Universities, and he currently serves as the past-chair of this organization. Crossley led the formation of the System of Systems Signature Area in the College of Engineering at Purdue, and he is a member of the "First Action" team implementing the Purdue Systems Collaboratory as part of Purdue Engineering's Strategic Plan. He is also the director for the Partnership to Enhance General Aviation Safety, Accessibility and Sustainability (PEGASAS), the FAA's Center of Excellence for General Aviation.

* Ellen Ernst Kossek is the Basil S. Turner Professor at Purdue's Krannert School of Management and research director of the Susan Bulkeley Butler Center for Leadership Excellence. She holds degrees from Yale University (PhD in organizational behavior), the University of Michigan (MBA in human resources); and Mount Holyoke College (honors in psychology.) Her research has won awards including the 2015 Rosabeth Moss Kanter award for research excellence, the Families and Work Institutes' Work-Life Legacy award for helping to build or advance the work-life movement and the Academy of Management's Gender and Diversity Division's Sage Scholarly achievement award for advancing understanding of gender and diversity in organizations. She was the first elected president of the Work-Family Researchers Network, a founding member of the Work Family Health Network and elected a fellow in the American Psychological Association and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. She was elected to serve on the Academy of Management's board of governors and as chair of the Gender & Diversity in Organizations Division. She has been invited to give keynote speeches to managers, scholars, students and policymakers in over a dozen countries and has received significant research funding such as from the National Institutes of Health and the Alfred P. Sloan and Gerber Foundations.

* Lisa Mauer is a professor in the Department of Food Science and director of the Center for Food Safety Engineering (CFSE) at Purdue. She holds degrees in food science from Purdue (BS honors) and the University of Minnesota (PhD). Mauer is widely recognized as a leading researcher on food materials science, encompassing water-solid interactions, food ingredient architecture, and micronutrient stability. Her research recognitions include the 2010 Agricultural Research Award and the 2014 IFT Marcel Loncin Research Prize. Mauer is active in teaching, mentoring and advising, has received the David C. Pfendler Outstanding Undergraduate Counselor Award, and is a fellow of the Purdue University Teaching Academy. As part of the Purdue Improved Cowpea Storage (PICS) project team, she contributed to providing simple, low-cost methods of reducing post-harvest cowpea losses in Africa. The PICS team received the Purdue University Corps of Engagement (2015) and TEAM (2016) awards. In her administrative center director role, Mauer leads and coordinates research activities in collaboration with USDA-ARS to develop new detection technologies for chemical and microbial contamination of foods. Two CFSE developed technologies were the winner and a top 5 finalist in the 2014 FDA Food Safety Challenge.

* Ronald J. Stephens is professor and director of African American Studies and Research Center (AASRC) in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies and the College of Liberal Arts at Purdue. He is author of "Idlewild: The Rise, Decline and Rebirth of a Unique African American Resort Town" (University of Michigan Press, 2013), "Idlewild: The Black Eden of Michigan" (Arcadia Publishing, 2001), and "African Americans of Denver" (Arcadia Publishing, 2008). Recognized for his research on black leisure and recreation, Stephens has appeared on and been cited in numerous public programs about the African American resort town in Idlewild, Michigan. As an academic leader and administrator, Stephens has interests in learning about some of the challenges Big Ten research universities face, as well as their operation, structure, and future promise.