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News Release

Last modified: Thursday, July 7, 2011

IU faculty members named Academic Leadership Program fellows for 2011-12

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 7, 2011

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Indiana University Bloomington today announced the selection of faculty members with distinugished leadership ability to participate in the Academic Leadership Program during the 2011-12 academic year. The program is sponsored by the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), a consortium of the Big Ten member universities plus the University of Chicago.

The Academic Leadership Program Fellows include:

• Yvette Alex-Assensoh, professor of political science and adjunct associate professor of African American & African Diaspora Studies, and dean of the Office for Women's Affairs
• Maria Bucur, John V. Hill Chair of East European History, Department of History, and associate dean for faculty and academic programs, College of Arts and Sciences
• Michael Evans, associate professor and associate dean for undergraduate studies, School of Journalism, and adjunct professor, Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, College of Arts and Sciences
• Kathleen R. Gilbert, professor, Department of Applied Health Science, and executive associate dean, School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation (HPER).

Faculty members are nominated for this honor and chosen because their records of scholarship and significant university service point to their growing achievements as academic leaders.

"So many former ALP fellows have moved into positions of administrative leadership on the Bloomington campus. I look forward to working with our newest cohort of fellows, who show great potential for following in the footsteps of their predecessors," said Vice Provost for Faculty and Academic Affairs Tom Gieryn.

Yvette Alex-Assensoh, by training and profession, is a political scientist. She currently serves as dean of the campus-wide Office for Women's Affairs (OWA). She previously served as director of graduate studies and admissions in the Department of Political Science, as well as an associate professor of political science and adjunct associate professor of African American & African Diaspora Studies. She has authored or co-authored more than two dozen scholarly papers, book chapters and essays, as well as five books, with the latest being Immigrants and American Racial Politics in the Early 21st Century, published by University of Michigan Press. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Council for the International Exchange of Scholars (CIES), the Spencer Foundation and the National Academy of Education. She was a fellow of the American Council on Education (ACE) for the 2010-2011 academic year. Alex-Assensoh is also a licensed attorney and a registered family mediator. A native of Breaux Bridge, La., Alex-Assensoh and her husband are the parents of two sons.

For more information on Alex-Assensoh, see https://www.indiana.edu/~owa/about_dean.html.

Maria Bucur received her Ph.D. from University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, in 1996. Her teaching and research focus on the recent history of Eastern Europe, with a focus on Romania and gender, and thematically ranging from questions of war and memory to the history of eugenics. Her recent publications include Heroes and Victims. Remembering Romania's Wars in the Twentieth Century (2009) and "An Archipelago of Stories: Gender History in Eastern Europe," in The American Historical Review (2008). She has given talks at conferences in Europe, North America, and Australia, and served as coordinator for the women's and gender history network of the European Social Science History Conference. She recently finished her term as president of the Association for Women in Slavic Studies and is currently working on a project focusing on comparing the transformation of everyday citizenship in communist and postcommunist Eastern Europe with the United States.

For more information on Bucur, see https://www.indiana.edu/~histweb/faculty/Display.php?Faculty_ID=49.

Michael Evans is an associate dean in the School of Journalism spearheading initiatives such as the curricular development of undergraduate specialization areas, the overhaul of the faculty committee structure, the creation of media expert workshops and the development of a streamlined database-driven scheduling system for the school.

He is known for his ethnographic research in media and culture, as well as international and ethnic journalism. Besides writing numerous journal articles in his field, most recently he has published the books The Fast Runner: Filming the Legend of Atanarjuat (2010) and Isuma: Inuit Video Art (2008). He has also written a widely used magazine-editing textbook titled The Layers of Magazine Editing (2004). Evans is also an accomplished freelance writer who has been published in Parade, Family Circle, Popular Science, and Popular Computing, among other magazines. He previously served as managing editor of Western Massachusetts Magazine; regional editor of the Daily Hampshire Gazette in Massachusetts; and publications editor for Northfield Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts. He was founder, writer and editor of a syndicated newspaper column called "Finders."

He is the recipient of the Frederic Bachman Lieber Award of teaching excellence (2006); the Trustees Teaching Award; four IU Teaching Excellence Recognition Awards; and the School of Journalism's Gretchen Kemp award for teaching excellence. Other awards of note include the Esther L. Kinsley Award for single most outstanding master's thesis at Indiana University (1997-98) and a Fulbright Fellowship to study in the eastern Canadian Arctic (1998-99).

For more information on Evans, see https://journalism.indiana.edu/about-us/faculty-staff/bio/?person=179.

Kathleen R. Gilbert is known for her cross-national qualitative research in bereavement, loss and grieving in the context of family, loss and meaning making, and stress and resilience in the family. She is published in major journals in her field of study. Presently she has two chapters in press titled "Echoes of loss: Long-term grief and adaptation among third culture kids" and "Technology and grief support in the twenty first century: A multimedia platform at www.opentohope.com." She also co-authors a website document titled Bereavement care best practice guidelines: Nursing research project for the Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario. Most recently she has begun preparing an article for Death Studies on how lives change after sudden cardiac death. Gilbert is the recipient of teaching and research awards and honors. She has been a Fellow in Thanatology since 2005 and certified in thanatology through the Association for Death Education and Counseling; Certified Family Life Educator since 2000 through the National Council on Family Relations; Teaching Excellence Recognition Award recipient; and Faculty Awardee from the Commission on Multicultural Understanding.

For more information on Gilbert, see https://info.hper.indiana.edu/sb/page/normal/103.html.

The Committee on Institutional Cooperation and the Academic Leadership Program

For more than half a century of effective voluntary cooperation, the CIC has proved to be an effective mechanism for enabling its members to accomplish more by working collectively. These collaborations have advanced academic missions, generated unique opportunities for students and faculty, and served the common good by sharing expertise, leveraging campus resources and working together on innovative programs. The primary objective of the Academic Leadership Program is to develop the leadership and managerial skills of faculty who have demonstrated exceptional ability and administrative promise.

For more about the consortium, see https://www.cic.net/Home.aspx. For more about ALP, see https://www.cic.net/Home/Projects/Leadership/ALP/Introduction.aspx.

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