Five faculty selected as fellows for Big Ten Academic Alliance's 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 2017-18 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:

* Greg Buzzard is professor and head of the Department of Mathematics, where he has led efforts to convert several foundational math courses to use the online homework system LON-CAPA, reduced the faculty teaching assignment to near parity with peer institutions, and coordinated the relocation to Purdue of the National Math Alliance, which was recognized with the 2017 Programs that Make a Difference Award from the American Mathematical Society. He received his PhD in mathematics from the University of Michigan, as well as degrees in computer science, mathematics and violin performance from Michigan State University. Before joining the Purdue faculty, he held postdoctoral positions at Indiana and Cornell universities. His work and research has contributed to cardiac and immune system modeling, as well as led to projects in compressed Raman spectroscopy, control theory, and work in algorithms for dynamic sampling and image reconstruction.

* Dimitrios Peroulis holds more than one title at Purdue, where he has been a member of faculty since August 2003. He is currently professor of electrical engineering, deputy director of the Birck Nanotechnology Center and the graduate admissions director in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He received his PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan in 2003. He has co-authored over 300 journal and conference papers, and his current research focuses on areas of reconfigurable electronics, RF MEMS and wireless sensors. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the Outstanding Young Engineer Award of the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society and the National Science Foundation CAREER Award. He is named a Purdue University Faculty Scholar and has received ten teaching awards, including the Charles B. Murphy Award, Purdue’s highest honor for undergraduate teaching.

* Barbara Golden is a professor of biochemistry and the interim assistant dean for graduate education and faculty development in the College of Agriculture.  Before becoming a member of Purdue faculty in 1998, she pursued postdoctoral studies at the University of Colorado. She received her PhD from Duke University. Her research is focused on basic science questions surrounding catalytic RNA or ribosome. She studies multiple diverse fields, including origin of life, synthetic biology, and gene regulation. She has been elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and also to the board of the directors of the RNA.        

* Susie Swithers is a professor and director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Psychological Sciences. She holds degrees from the University of Virginia (B.A.) and Duke University (PhD). Her research program is focused on the roles of development, experience, and learning on behavioral, psychological and neural systems that contribute to the regulation of food intake, metabolism and obesity-related health outcomes. She is a recognized authority on the effects of non-nutritive sweeteners on metabolic outcomes and obesity, and she has served on a variety of National Institutes of Health study sections, including chairing the chartered Biobehavioral Regulation, Learning, and Ethology study section for two years.   

* Jennifer William is professor of German in the School of Languages and Cultures. She is affiliated with the interdisciplinary programs of Film and Video Studies, Jewish Studies, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies in the College of Liberal Arts, as well as being co-founder of Purdue’s Center for Cognitive Literary Studies. Her teaching and research specializations include German literature, culture, film and cognitive studies. In addition to a number of journal articles and book chapters in scholarly anthologies, she has published two monographs ("Killing Time: Waiting Hierarchies in the Twentieth-Century German Novel," Bucknell University Press, 2010; and "Cognitive Approaches to German Historical Film: Seeing is Not Believing," Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), and was co-editor of the volume "Theory of Mind and Literature," Purdue University Press, 2011. She serves on the editorial board of The Literary Encyclopedia as an editor and evaluator for the German literature entries. Her administrative experience to date includes serving as chair of German and Russian (2007-2013); associate head of the School of Languages and Cultures (2013-2016); and Provost Fellow for Faculty Awards and Recognition (2015-2016). She has been a member of Purdue faculty since 2002.  

Writer: Olivia Crouse, 765-480-1322, ocrouse@purdue.edu