July 10, 2009
Purdue trustees approve faculty appointments, new program and department renaming
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - The Purdue University board of trustees on Friday (July 10) ratified the appointments of four distinguished and named professors and a Purdue Calumet vice chancellor, and approved a new program and the renaming of a department.The trustees also ratified the previously announced appointment of Jeffrey Roberts as the Frederick L. Hovde Dean of the College of Science and changed James S. Almond's title to senior vice president for business services and assistant treasurer.
Trustees approved the appointments of Daniela Bortoletto as Distinguished Professor of Physics; H. Jay Melosh as Distinguished Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and Physics; Fred Mannering as the Charles Pankow Professor of Civil Engineering; Mary J. Wirth as the W. Brooks Fortune Professor of Chemistry; and Daniel L. Hendricks as the vice chancellor for advancement at Purdue Calumet.
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Bortoletto is an international leader in the study of elemental particles and the forces that govern their interactions. She was a co-discoverer of the top quark, a fundamental building block of nature, which is nearly 200 times heavier than a proton. She is an expert on the design of silicon detectors and has led the development of powerful new detectors for particle physics experiments, including the CMS experiment for the Large Hadron Collider at the CERN in Geneva, Switzerland.
Bortoletto has received numerous awards for her work, including the Alfred P. Sloan fellowship. She is a member of various national and international committees and panels. These include advisory panels for the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation that recommends plans and directions for the future of particle physics in the United States. At Purdue, Bortoletto initiated the society of Women in Physics and serves as the undergraduate group's adviser.
Bortoletto earned her undergraduate degree in physics at the University of Pavia in Italy and her master's and doctoral degrees from Syracuse University. She first joined Purdue as a postdoctoral research associate in 1989.
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Melosh will join Purdue's Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences on Aug. 17. He's now a regents professor at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Melosh's principal research interests are the ramifications of impact cratering, planetary tectonics, and the physics of earthquakes and landslides. He also is active in astrobiological studies that relate mainly to the exchange of microorganisms between the terrestrial planets.
Melosh has received numerous awards for his research, including the Barringer Medal of the Meteoritical Society, the Gilbert Award of the Geological Society of America and the Hess Medal of the American Geophysical Union. A member of the National Academy of Sciences and several other prominent national and international panels and committees, Melosh recently was a consultant to the Hayden Planetarium of the American Museum of Natural History.
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Melosh received his undergraduate degree in physics from Princeton University and his doctoral degree in physics and geology from Caltech.
Mannering is a professor of civil engineering who headed the School of Civil Engineering from 2001-2005. He also holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Economics.
His research interests are in the application of econometric and statistical methods to a variety of engineering problems, highway safety, transportation economics, automobile demand and travel behavior. He has published extensively in these fields, has co-authored two widely adopted textbooks and is editor-in-chief of Elsevier journal Transportation Research Part B-Methodological.
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Mannering earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, his master's degree from Purdue, and his doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Wirth, who joined Purdue's Department of Chemistry on July 1, was a full professor at the University of Arizona in Tucson. A 1978 Purdue graduate, Wirth's research is in the area of development of novel separations approaches for biological molecules, such as proteins. She's an expert in the area of separations and in optical spectroscopy.
Wirth received her bachelor's degree in chemistry from Northern Illinois University and her doctorate from Purdue.
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Hendricks, who will begin his duties at Purdue Calumet on Aug. 3, will oversee development and alumni, marketing and university relations. He will succeed Judith Kaufman, who's retiring after heading the advancement operation since 2004.
A native of Evansville, Ind., Hendricks was previously vice president for advancement and public services at Western Illinois University and executive officer of the Western Illinois University Foundation. He also has been vice president and chief development officer of the Louisiana State University Foundation, director and chief operations officer of The Campaign for the University of Kentucky, and director of planned giving at Hanover College.
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Hendricks holds a bachelor's degree from DePauw University, and master's and doctorate degrees from Duke. He also received a fellowship from the University of Geneva (Switzerland).
Roberts, whose appointment was announced June 16, will start as the dean of the College of Science at Purdue in August. He's now the chair of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Minnesota.
Almond joined Purdue in 1983 as a project administrator in the Office of Contract and Grant Business Affairs. In his current role as vice president for business services and assistant treasurer,
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In other businesses, trustees approved a bachelor's degree in engineering technology at the College of Technology's Anderson, Kokomo, Richmond and South Bend locations. The degree program would serve both students and industry clients by employing technical knowledge, problem-solving techniques, and applied engineering and technology skills in traditional and emerging areas. Graduates would be able to seek employment in entry-level positions as industrial engineers, operations managers, production managers, quality assurance engineers, sales engineers and systems integrators.
Initial enrollment for this program is projected to be 10 full-time and 17 part-time students, increasing to 124 full-time and 87 part-time students within five years.
The program is subject to approval by the Indiana Commission for Higher Education.
The trustees also approved changing the academic title of the Patti and Rusty Rueff Department of Visual and Performing Arts to a school within the College of Liberal Arts, given its size, complexity and national prominence. Randy Woodson, executive vice president for academic affairs and provost, said this change will enhance the school's recognition among similar programs and at other leading universities.
Trustees also approved posthumously awarding a doctoral degree to Elaine Roundtree Love, who died March 14, 2008. Love, a doctoral student in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, had completed all of the course requirements and, at the time of her death, was working on the final revisions of her dissertation.
Writer: Soumitro Sen, 765-496-9711, ssen@purdue.edu
Sources: Randy Woodson, 765-494-9709, woodson@purdue.edu
Jeffrey Roberts, jtrob@purdue.edu
James S. Almond, 765-494-9706, jsalmond@purdue.edu
Daniela Bortoletto, 765-494-5197, bortolet@purdue.edu
H. Jay Melosh, 520-621-2806, jmelosh@lpl.arizona.edu
Fred Mannering, 765-496-7913, flm@purdue.edu
Mary J. Wirth, mwirth@purdue.edu
Daniel Hendricks, dl-hendricks@wiu.edu
Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu
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