Five U. of I. faculty members have been named 2013-14 fellows of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation's Academic Leadership Program.
The program provides leadership development for accomplished faculty members who are interested in learning more about academic administration. It is designed to introduce faculty members to issues and challenges in higher education and offers them opportunities to meet with leaders at CIC member institutions.
"The program really fosters connections to faculty in similar positions at other Big Ten universities and it gives the fellows a great introduction to what it means to work in higher education administration," said Barb Wilson, the executive vice provost for faculty and academic affairs and the campus CIC liaison.
Fellows are selected by each CIC campus; the CIC comprises the Big Ten universities and the University of Chicago.
"As always, those selected from the U. of I. campus are very talented and eager to start the process," she said. "I will be working closely with the fellows throughout the year and look forward to watching their growth as leaders."
The 2013-14 CIC fellows:
Fouad Abd-El-Khalick is a professor and the head of curriculum and instruction in the College of Education. His research focuses on teaching and learning about the nature of science in precollege grades. He is co-leading a large-scale initiative funded by the National Science Foundation to prepare a new generation of science teacher leaders by integrating social and entrepreneurial leadership into existing modalities. He also maintains an active international program of educational research and development in Egypt, Lebanon and Qatar.
Abd-El-Khalick served as an elected member of the executive board of the National Association for Research on Science Teaching (2004-2007). From Illinois, he received the College of Education Distinguished Scholar Award (2005) and Distinguished Senior Scholar Award (2011), and was named a University Scholar (2006-2009). He was recently elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Rajagopal Echambadi is a professor of business administration and an associate dean of outreach and engagement in the College of Business. He also serves as an affiliate faculty member in the Institute for Genomic Biology. Echambadi's major research interests focus on strategic entrepreneurship. Specifically, he is interested in how firms explore new opportunities (new products, new production processes or even new organizational forms) and subsequently exploit these innovations for long-term competitive advantage.
His research articles have appeared in several journals, including Management Science, Marketing Science, Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal and Multivariate Behavioral Research. His paper on employee entrepreneurship won the award for the best paper published in the Academy of Management Journal in 2004.
He has taught a wide range of courses in competitive strategy, marketing strategy, strategic innovation and econometric methods at the undergraduate, MBA, executive MBA and Ph.D. levels, and he has received numerous honors for his teaching accomplishments.
Alejandro Lugo is a professor of anthropology and of Latina/Latino studies in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, where he has been a faculty member for 17 years. Throughout his years at Illinois, his research and theoretical interests in gender, class and culture, the state (colonial and modern), capitalism, and colonial and postcolonial histories, as well as race and ethnicity, historically and in the present, have allowed him to recruit, guide and mentor a variety of doctoral students from diverse backgrounds, including U.S. minorities, European Americans or white Americans, and international students.
In addition to having served on more than 60 doctoral committees, he also has made "The List of Excellent Teachers" several times since 1995. In 2009, he received the inaugural campuswide Larine Y. Cowan Make A Difference Award for his "dedication to and success in promoting diversity and inclusivity at Illinois."
His book, "Fragmented Lives, Assembled Parts: Culture, Capitalism, and Conquest at the U.S.-Mexico Border" (University of Texas Press, 2008), has received two national book awards: the 2008 Southwest Book Award, as well as the 2009 ALLA Book Award from the American Anthropological Association.
Martin Wong is the Edward C. Jordan Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the acting associate dean for academic affairs in the College of Engineering. He has had several significant committee assignments in the college, including serving as chair of the Promotion and Tenure Committee and as a member of the Executive Committee.
He has published nearly 400 technical papers and advised more than 40 Ph.D. students in the area of electronic design automation. He has won several best paper awards from premier electronic design automation journals and at conferences. He has served on the editorial boards of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' Transactions on Computers, IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design and the Association for Computing Machinery's Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems. In 2011, he received an ACM Special Interest Group on Design Automation Distinguished Service Award. He was a IEEE Distinguished Lecturer in 2005 and 2006. He is a fellow of the IEEE.
Ann Yeung is a professor of music in the College of Fine and Applied Arts. She has presented harp master classes and lectures at festivals and conferences throughout the world, including seven invitations to perform at the triennial World Harp Congress. She has won international prizes in France and Japan and national competitions, including simultaneously winning first prize in the two highest divisions of the American Harp Society's National Solo Competition.
Exploring the connection between art and technology, she has premiered more than 40 works, and is half of the acclaimed Aletheia Duo.
Her articles on Henriette Renié and Elias Parish Alvars have been published internationally. She has served as assistant director of faculty affairs, string division chair, and on the executive committee in the School of Music since joining Illinois in 1999. She is a board member of the World Harp Congress and the American Harp Society and has previously served on the AHS executive committee. Since 2002, she has been the editor of the WHC's official journal. She is the School of Music associate director of faculty affairs for 2013-14.