Faculty, staff, students receive Violet Haas and Leadership in Action awards

Recipients of the Violet Haas Award, Leadership in Action Awards and Violet Haas Memorial Fellowship will be honored at a reception held at 4:30 p.m. Dec. 6 in Purdue Memorial Union's Anniversary Drawing Room. Jay Akridge, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs and diversity, will present the awards along with co-host Mangala Subramaniam, director of the Susan Bulkeley Butler Center for Leadership Excellence and professor of sociology.

“We saw many outstanding submissions this year,” Akridge says. “It’s very gratifying to see so many of our faculty and staff members nominating their peers. These awards show us what a powerful -- and positive -- impact individuals can have on the people around them.”

The 2017-18 Violet Haas Award winners are Venetria Patton, professor and head of the School of Interdisciplinary Studies in the College of Liberal Arts, and joint awardees Neil Knobloch, professor, and Levon Esters, associate professor, both in the Department of Agricultural Sciences Education and Communication.

The Violet Haas Award recognizes individuals, programs or departments at Purdue that have effectively facilitated the advancement of women in hiring, promotion, education and salary, or have generally enhanced a positive professional climate for women at Purdue. The Butler Center administers the award. This is the 28th annual Violet Haas Award ceremony.

The Butler Center also administers the Leadership in Action Awards, honoring a faculty member, staff member and student, each of whom must show leadership with direct effect on their work and community environments. To be eligible for these awards, individuals must demonstrate ongoing commitment to engagement at the local, state, national and/or global level; active service to the campus community; and national service to academic and/or professional organizations.

The 2018-19 Leadership in Action awardees are Ximena Arriaga, professor, Department of Psychological Sciences, in the faculty category; Jessica Ramsey, assistant director, Purdue Promise scholarship program, in the staff category; and Brittany Mihalec-Adkins, Ph.D. student, human development and family studies, in the student category.

The Violet Haas Memorial Fellowship awardees will be honored by the College of Engineering and the College of Science and will be introduced by Arvind Raman, senior associate dean of the faculty in the College of Engineering and the Robert V. Adams Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and Lucy Flesch, associate dean for academic affairs in the College of Science and professor in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences.

The 2018 College of Engineering recipient of the Violet Haas Fellowship is Professor Joyce Main, assistant professor of engineering education with a courtesy appointment in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. The 2018 College of Science recipient of the Violet Haas Fellowship is Professor Catherine L. Searle, assistant professor of biological sciences.

The reception is open to all; registration is required no later than Nov. 29.