April 14, 2016  

Purdue professor named American Council on Education fellow

Rebecca Doerge

Rebecca Doerge 
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WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Rebecca W. Doerge, the Trent and Judith Anderson Distinguished Professor of Statistics at Purdue University, was chosen as one of 33 fellows selected nationwide this year by the American Council on Education.

The program focuses on identifying and preparing fellows for senior leadership roles. The 2016-17 class will bring to nearly 2,000 the number of higher education leaders who have participated in the program since its inception in 1965. More than 300 of the fellows have gone on to serve as chief executive officers of colleges and universities, and more than 1,800 have served as provosts, vice presidents or deans, according to ACE.

"Rebecca has shown herself to be a gifted and energetic administrator, who has been unafraid to take on challenging leadership assignments at Purdue," said Jeffrey Roberts, the Frederick L. Hovde Dean of the College of Science. "She is a wonderful example of what the American Council on Education stands for. We are proud of her accomplishments and our participation in this prestigious program."

The ACE Fellows Program combines retreats, interactive learning opportunities, campus visits and placement at another higher education institution to condense years of on-the-job experience and skills development into a single year. The program includes building expertise and experience in an issue relevant to each ACE fellow's institution.

Doerge will focus on strategies to improve the development of leadership and administration, particularly at the departmental level, and methods to help identify, recruit and train potential leaders.

She has served as head of the Department of Statistics and as director of Purdue's Statistical Bioinformatics Center. She also is a professor of agronomy and the Purdue President's Fellow on Big Data and Simulation. Increasing the number of people who have the skills to analyze and gain insights from "big data" toward analytical decisions is part of the Purdue Moves initiative. The initiative is designed to broaden the university’s global impact and enhance student educational opportunities. Purdue Moves priorities fit into four broad categories: science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) leadership; world-changing research; transformative education and affordability and accessibility.

Doerge is an elected 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 has served as an associate editor for the journals Epigenomics, G3: Genes-Genomes-Genetics and Journal of the American Statistics Association (JASA).

Her main area of research is statistical bioinformatics, which brings together many scientific disciplines to help understand the function and control of DNA. 

Writer: Greg McClure, 765-496-9711, gmcclure@purdue.edu 

Sources: Jeffrey Roberts, 765-494-1730, jtrob@purdue.edu

Rebecca Doerge, 765-494-6037, doerge@purdue.edu 

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