CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign presents the Campus Awards for Excellence in Faculty Leadership each year to distinguished faculty who enrich the intellectual vitality of campus and the broader community.
The awards were presented in three categories — faculty mentoring, distinguished executive officer and outstanding faculty leadership — to four faculty members during a ceremony hosted by the Office of the Provost on campus this week.
The awards and recipients, with descriptions from their nominations, are:
Jennifer Teper, the Bud Velde Preservation Librarian and head of Preservation Services for the University Library, received the Excellence in Faculty Mentoring Award. This award recognizes a faculty member who has demonstrated an outstanding commitment to faculty mentoring by actively assisting pretenure and mid-career faculty in developing their career.
Amid her pioneering research on the preservation and conservation of library collections, Teper has acted as mentor and inspiration to many students and early career faculty who have become librarians and archivists at institutions in Illinois and beyond. While she has devoted countless hours mentoring scholars individually, Teper has committed even more work toward creating a system and culture that effectively mentors and supports the Library’s faculty. She was critical to the effort of designing the mentoring program and internal process used for promoting associate professors within the Library and served as a co-chair on a task force to update and integrate the processes and documentation for specialized faculty promotion pathways. Last December, Teper concluded a four-year stint as co-chair Library’s Promotion and Tenure Advisory Committee and has also served on several campuswide committees dedicated to the advancement of faculty, including the Campus Promotion and Tenure Committee, the Named Faculty Appointments Committee and the Campus Promotion and Tenure Off-Cycle Committee.
Rohit Bhargava, a professor of bioengineering, the Grainger Distinguished Chair in Engineering and the Phillip and Ann Sharp Director of the Cancer Center at Illinois, and Andrew Suarez, a professor and the acting head of the Department of Entomology and the Jeffrey S. Elowe Professor in Evolution, Ecology and Behavior, each received the Executive Officer Distinguished Leadership Award. This award recognizes outstanding academic leadership and vision by an executive officer within a college or campus unit who has led diverse groups through strategic improvements within their unit or campus.
Bhargava has been a pioneering figure in numerous efforts to position Illinois at the cutting-edge of biological research, but his role in the creation of the CCIL marks his most lasting contribution to the university. Under his leadership as the founding director, the CCIL has evolved from just an idea into a campus institute engaging over 120 faculty members and hundreds of students and postdoctoral fellows. Bhargava also cultivated strategic partnerships to grow the CCIL into a new national model in which basic sciences and engineering discoveries are propelled to provide solutions that impact those affected by cancer. His vision and organizational efforts have led to exponential growth in the university’s cancer research capabilities, innovative educational programs, new physical facilities, faculty mentoring and leadership development programs, awarding of many major federal grants and the translation of Illinois discoveries to benefit public health.
Suarez embodies transformative leadership in higher education with his track record of revitalizing departments, advancing diversity and equity initiatives and promoting a culture of community and mentoring. He views himself not as a unit’s “leader” but its “champion” — someone whose primary role is to advocate for and serve the unit’s faculty and students. In the past decade of Suarez’s time as director or department head in three different units, he has established a commitment to transparency while nurturing talent and incentivizing excellence. Suarez is an exceptional communicator of science and prioritizes making the work of his faculty and students highly visible. Through careful strategizing, he has ensured that most of his faculty receive coverage in online or print media at least once a year. As an administrator, scholar and mentor, his contributions can be observed across his departments, campus and the broader scientific community.
Vikram Adve, the Donald B. Gillies Professor of Computer Science in the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science, received the Outstanding Faculty Leadership Award. This award recognizes a faculty member who has provided extraordinary leadership contributions across many dimensions of shared governance that advance the excellence of a unit, a college and/or the campus, and who exemplifies the campus commitment to collaborative decision-making. This award is the highest accolade honoring a faculty member whose professional service has advanced progress toward the Illinois mission.
In more than 25 years as a faculty member, Adve has worked as a visionary leader whose cross-disciplinary initiatives have transformed research, education and industry engagement with Illinois, securing millions in funding and positioning the university at the forefront of artificial intelligence for sustainable agriculture. He worked closely with the leadership and faculty of The Grainger College of Engineering and the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences to create the Center for Digital Agriculture in 2018, leveraging what were then only grassroots interactions between faculty in those disciplines into what is now an internationally recognized center for research and outreach in digital agriculture. The CDA has secured more than $36 million in external research funding during his leadership of the center, vaulting far past the $2.1 million in initial seed funding that launched the project. Shortly after, Adve again led an intensive effort to establish an institute bridging the fields of agriculture and artificial intelligence with the formation of the Artificial Intelligence for Future Agricultural Resilience, Management, and Sustainability Institute — or AIFARMS — which addresses foundational AI advances and their uses for tackling broad agricultural challenges such as autonomous farming, climate resilience, soil health and the economics of technology adoption.
