Agnew appointed associate vice president for research, regulatory affairs

Christopher R. Agnew, professor and former head of the Department of Psychological Sciences, has been selected to serve as the associate vice president for research, regulatory affairs.

Agnew will report to the executive vice president for research and partnerships and is responsible for research regulatory and compliance oversight involving human participants; research, teaching or testing involving vertebrate animals; chemical, biological and radiological hazards; and development of system-wide policies.  His appointment becomes effective in August.

"Dr. Agnew brings a wealth of experience to this position, having served as head of the Department of Psychological Sciences at Purdue for eight years,” says Suresh Garimella, executive vice president for research and partnerships, and Purdue's Goodson Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering. “He is very knowledgeable about federal research compliance and training requirements and will ensure the responsible and ethical conduct of research at Purdue.”

Howie Zelaznik, professor of health and kinesiology, has administered the regulatory affairs for Purdue for the last five years and will return to full-time faculty status in August. 

 “We are grateful for Dr. Zelaznik’s dedication and diligence overseeing several successful audits and accreditations of our programs, centralizing the laboratory animal program, and implementing an online submission process for human subject protocols to the IRB,” Garimella says. 

Agnew’s primary research interests are in interpersonal relations, including commitment processes, dissolution processes, and social network interactions and influence, and the use of relational models to understand broader social and health processes.

“I am prepared to hit the ground running to enhance Purdue’s regulatory systems while maintaining effective safeguards to the integrity of our research mission,” says Agnew, a social psychologist who also has affiliated faculty appointments in communication and in political science.

Agnew has been a principal or co-principal investigator on a number of grant-funded research projects, including large-scale grants funded by the National Institutes of Health (National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. He has published more than 100 research articles and chapters, and has presented his work in more than 300 presentations at international, national and regional meetings.

He is a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, American Psychological Association, International Association for Relationship Research, Midwestern Psychological Association, the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. He served as president of the International Association for Relationship Research.

Agnew has served on the editorial boards for the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, and as associate editor for Personal Relationships. He is among the general editors of the Cambridge University Press book series Advances in Personal Relationships.

He received his undergraduate degree from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and his PhD in social psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.