Office of Faculty Development Announces 2024-25 Chancellor’s Leadership Fellows

The Office of Faculty Development (OFD) has announced six UMass Amherst faculty members as Chancellor's Leadership Fellows for 2024-25.<_o3a_p>

The Chancellor's Leadership Fellowship (CLF) program seeks to cultivate future campus leaders by offering a half-time, one-year temporary appointment to an administrative area on campus and providing mentoring from the leader of the host unit. In addition, fellows are expected to launch a significant program during their fellowship year.<_o3a_p>

"The Chancellor's Leadership Fellows program is an important opportunity for both the campus and our faculty," says Provost and Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Fouad Abd-El-Khalick. "I look forward to collaborating with each of them as they work on projects to expand their leadership development in ways that benefit our entire university."<_o3a_p>

The CLF nomination and application process commences annually in December. Full-time tenured faculty, senior lecturers and librarians on continuing appointments are eligible for the fellowship, which is administered by the Office of Faculty Development.<_o3a_p>

More information about the Chancellor's Leadership Fellowship program and a list of past fellows can be found on the OFD website.

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2024-25 Chancellor's Leadership Fellows<_o3a_p>

Allison Butler<_o3a_p>

Allison Butler, senior lecturer II of communication, will be exploring ways to re-imagine the undergraduate general education curriculum and consider more opportunities for experiential learning for students. Butler will be working with Farshid Hajir, senior vice provost and dean of undergraduate education. <_o3a_p>

Butler's research focuses on critical media literacy where she works with and on behalf of students and teachers to bring the study of the media to classrooms. Her current research includes explorations of surveillance technologies in education, how treatment of gender in pop culture centers and silences women, and the ways in which critical media literacy can push back against these invasions.<_o3a_p>

"I am thrilled to work with Senior Vice Provost and Dean of Undergraduate Education Hajir on this project," Butler says. "Experiential learning is a transformative experience for students, one that provides students with practical skills, invaluable contributions to their resumes, and the opportunity to see in real-time how their work matters. Further, a robust general education curriculum invites students to think both broadly and deeply about the complexities of the world and their own roles. I admire Hajir's respect for, and thoughtful approach to, undergraduate teaching and learning and am honored to be on his team."<_o3a_p>

Eleni Christofa<_o3a_p>

Eleni Christofa, professor of civil and environmental engineering, will work on exploring opportunities for experiential learning and industry engagement for undergraduate and graduate students in engineering. This work will focus particularly on an expanded use of the Mount Ida Campus to support cooperative education and internship experiences. Christofa will be working with Michelle Budig, senior vice provost for faculty and academic affairs, and Sanjay Raman, dean of the College of Engineering.<_o3a_p>

Christofa's research focuses on sustainable and resilient transportation systems that provide equitable access and safe operations to all users regardless of the transportation mode they use. Her recent work focuses on identifying transportation access inequities through community engaged research, developing traffic signal control strategies that minimize emissions, assessing the effectiveness of bicycle infrastructure treatments in improving safety for all users, and developing design guidelines for accessible bus stops.<_o3a_p>

"I am excited about working with campus leadership to enhance the educational experiences for our students by facilitating new initiatives at the Mount Ida Campus that leverage opportunities in the Greater Boston area," Christofa says. "I hope that my work through this fellowship contributes to our university's mission by engaging engineers in community and industrial partnerships, enabling them to innovate to solve society's most pressing problems." <_o3a_p>

Tammy Rahhal<_o3a_p>

Tammy Rahhal, senior lecturer of psychological and brain sciences, will work on a broad array of issues in undergraduate education. Among these, she will review the general education program and the curricular and pedagogical aspects of the first-year experience. Rahhal will be working with Hajir.<_o3a_p>

For the last 20 years, Rahhal's research has focused on improving student success in large, gen-ed courses by using technology, flexible learning environments and best practices for student inclusion and belonging. She also serves as the associate chair for teaching for the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, where she focuses on undergraduate curricular development, mentoring faculty and graduate students in teaching and overseeing advising for the 2,200 psychology majors.<_o3a_p>

"I am excited to broaden my focus from improving student success for students in our large undergraduate program in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences to improving student success for all undergraduate students," says Rahhal. "By examining our current general education curriculum with an eye towards creating pathways for our students, who are focused on careers post-graduation, we will best prepare them for life beyond university."<_o3a_p>

Neena Thota<_o3a_p>

Neena Thota, senior lecturer II of information and computer sciences, will create professional development materials and a guide for a menu of programming options to support faculty mentors of graduate teaching assistants and associates, which reflect the needs of various departments and colleges and are situated in a framework of inclusive teaching practice. Thota will be working with Claire Hamilton, associate provost and director of the Center for Teaching and Learning and with Beth Jakob, associate dean of the Graduate School. <_o3a_p>

In addition to teaching other courses within the Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences, Thota has designed and teaches the program Teaching Assistants as Tomorrow's Faculty, which prepares teaching assistants to fulfill their duties in an effective and pedagogically sound manner. She is the director of the Early Research Scholar Program for undergraduate students, is an Institute of Diversity Sciences (IDS) Faculty Fellow funded by the Sloan Foundation for undergraduate research mentoring, and is engaged in a number of National Science Foundation (NSF) projects.<_o3a_p>

"I am looking forward to collecting information on the scope and nature of programs provided by programs, departments, and colleges which support faculty in their supervision of graduate teaching assistants and associates on our campus and to identify best practices offered by peer institutions," Thota says. "I am excited to then implement a pilot offering of the mentor training materials and a plan for broad-scale dissemination to our campus."<_o3a_p>

Michelle Trim<_o3a_p>

Michelle Trim, senior lecturer II in the Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences (MCICS), will support the campus' efforts to adopt the responsible use of artificial intelligence tools through developing training materials and public website content that outlines the campus' policies, recommendations, and best practices on use of artificial intelligence and similar tools. In collaboration with campus governance, additional work involves consideration of what recommendations by the Joint Task Force on Generative Artificial Intelligence need to be translated into policies or to be studied further. Trim will be working with Tilman Wolf, senior vice provost and deputy chancellor for operational and organizational strategies.<_o3a_p>

Trim teaches courses in informatics and on the social impacts and ethical considerations of computing, and she directs the junior year writing program within MCICS. She was among the first class of Teaching for Inclusion, Diversity and Equity (TIDE) fellows in 2016 and of the Public Interest Technology (PIT) fellows of 2022, was awarded the College Outstanding Teaching Award in 2019-2020, and the Faculty Peer Mentoring Award in 2021. Her scholarship focuses on the impacts of computers on society and interdisciplinary approaches to teaching data literacy. She is the current chair of the Association of Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Computers and Society (ACM SIGCAS).<_o3a_p>

Trim says, "As a Chancellor's Leadership Fellow, I look forward to engaging diverse audiences in learning about A.I. technologies and their responsible use, while building on the existing best practices for interdisciplinary collaboration and shared governance that are well established on our campus. My hope is to use my knowledge and training to equip the members of our community to approach A.I. tools thoughtfully and deliberately, and with consideration for the potential impacts of their use."<_o3a_p>

Michael Zink<_o3a_p>

Michael Zink, professor of electrical and computer engineering, will collaborate with Chris Misra, vice chancellor for Information Technology and CIO, and Tom Bernardin, director of Research Computing and Data and executive director of the Center for Data Science, to shape and execute UMass Amherst's strategic objectives in cyberinfrastructure. Achieving this goal requires engaging with faculty members and key committees, including the Faculty Senate's Research Council, Research Computing Committee, and Information and Communication Technology Council (ICTC).<_o3a_p>

For the past 20 years, Zink's research has focused on multimedia systems, cyber infrastructure, and large-scale sensor networks. He co-leads the Paros Center for Atmospheric Research and served as co-director for the graduated NSF Engineering Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere.<_o3a_p>

"The primary objective of my Chancellor's Leadership Fellowship is to create and maintain high-quality cyberinfrastructure on our campus, benefiting both faculty and students while attracting world-class scholars," Zink says. "Nearly every researcher at UMass Amherst relies on some form of cyberinfrastructure to advance their scientific discoveries. For instance, social scientists leverage HPC clusters for data analysis, researchers in the Stockbridge School of Agriculture employ wireless sensors and drones for smart farming, and faculty in chemistry pioneer computational methods to explore biomolecules and biomaterials. These instances merely scratch the surface of the diverse applications of cyberinfrastructure across our campus."<_o3a_p>

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