September 10, 2018: University Senate Report
Office of the Provost
Appointment of Nicole Sampson as Interim Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences
Dr. Nicole Sampson, Professor of Chemistry, has assumed new duties as the Interim Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS), effective July 16, 2018. A former Department Chair in Chemistry, Nicole was an undergraduate student at Harvey Mudd College and then completed her Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley. After holding an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard, she joined Stony Brook as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry in 1993. Nicole has also served as an Associate Dean in CAS, and she is a member of the Biochemistry and Structural Biology Graduate Program as well as of the Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology Graduate Program. She is the Co-Director of a Chemical Biology Training Program funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and a founding faculty member in Stony Brook's Institute for Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery.
Nicole’s honors and awards include the Camille and Henry Dreyfus New Faculty Award; a National Science Foundation CAREER Award; the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award and the Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry, both from the American Chemical Society; the Research Foundation of SUNY Research and Scholarship Award; and the New York State NYSTAR Faculty Development Award. In 2017, she was selected as a Fellow of the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS). Nicole has received over $16 million in research support primarily from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. She has authored over 100 peer-reviewed articles, reviews, and issued patents. Nicole serves on the editorial advisory boards of Accounts of Chemical Research, the Journal of Organic Chemistry, and chairs the editorial advisory board of Chemical & Engineering News. She reviews NIH training grants nation-wide as a member of the Training and Workforce Development B Study Section at the NIH. Nicole was elected a Fellow of the American Chemical Society in 2017.
Appointment of Richard Gerrig as Interim Dean of the Graduate School and Interim Vice Provost for Graduate and Professional Education
Dr. Richard J. Gerrig, Professor of Psychology, has assumed new duties as Interim
Dean of the Graduate School and Interim Vice Provost for Graduate and Professional
Education, effective 1 August 2018. A former director of both the undergraduate and
graduate programs in his Department, Richard once served as Director of the Stony
Brook Honors College, and was also a member of the committees that helped to design
and implement the Stony Brook Curriculum. A 2016 recipient of a SUNY Chancellor's
Award for Excellence in Faculty Service, he was an undergraduate at Yale University
and received his PhD from Stanford. Richard's first faculty
appointment was at Yale, where he was ultimately awarded the Lex Hixon ‘63 Prize for
Teaching Excellence in the Social Sciences.
Richard joined the Stony Brook faculty in 1994. His research examines complex uses of language. Richard is particularly interested in the psychological processes that enable speakers to produce utterances that are designed for specific "addressees." Currently the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Memory and Language, Richard has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles, chapters, and Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), has found a broad audience across several scholarly disciplines. Richard has been invited to make major presentations at conferences on Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image, Computational Models of Narrative, Current Trends in Narratology, and Cognitive Futures in the Arts and Humanities. Richard is a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, the Society for Text and Discourse, and the Division of Experimental Psychology of the American Psychological Association.
Appointment of Shafeek Fazal as Interim Dean of University Libraries
Mr. Shafeek Fazal, the Associate Dean for Library Technology, Discovery, and Digital Initiatives, has assumed new duties as Interim Dean of University Libraries, effective 1 August 2018. A recipient of bachelor's and master's degrees in Electrical Engineering from the City College of New York, and of a master's degree in Library and Information Science from Queens College (CUNY), he is a key member of the University Libraries’ leadership team. As the Associate Dean focused on digital services, Shafeek has worked to empower library users to achieve their goals in research, scholarship, art-making, teaching, and learning. Among his many accomplishments, he established a team of librarians and staff to support all library technology initiatives, created and sustained an innovative program that has produced several new digital collections, implemented tools and services for enhancing the discovery of new research resources, established a University Center for Scholarly Communication, and assisted with leading the SUNY Open Access effort. The latter activity has served to place Stony Brook at the forefront of such initiatives both in the SUNY system and in American higher education as a whole. Shafeek has also played a key role in designing and creating new technology-rich student study spaces, and in augmenting user experience with the Library’s web and other virtual investigative spaces and platforms. He currently leads several major projects at the Library, including the promotion of textbook affordability through the SUNY Open Educational Resources (OER) program and the development of a large scale institutional repository platform for all of our University's scholarship, research, data, and digital (and digitized) art.
Call to Submit Recent Awards to the Faculty Awards Archive
The Office of the Provost is updating its archive of all awards and honors received by Stony Brook faculty. Without timely input, the University will be unable to properly acknowledge faculty achievements. Please be advised that any public recognition of these honors is at the discretion of event organizers. For further questions, please contact Andrei Antonenko at andrei.antonenko@stonybrook.edu.
Stony Brook Foundation Trustees Faculty Fellowships
The Stony Brook Foundation Trustees Faculty Fellowship is a new program to enhance early career-stage faculty research, scholarship, and art-making. With support from the Offices of the Provost and the President, five Stony Brook Foundation Trustees Faculty Fellows will be selected through a competitive process. Each Fellow will receive a grant of $20,000 to develop a project of creative significance and notable impact. With the resources thus provided, Fellows will have an exceptional opportunity for professional growth and academic development. A formal announcement of this Fellowship competition will go out shortly.
The Faculty Commons
The Faculty Commons is a new initiative to facilitate faculty efforts in teaching, program l provide instructors support in all of these areas – and it will serve as a collaborative space for colleagues to engage in both formal and informal interactions. The Commons was designed through a joint effort linking the President’s Office, the Provost’s Office, the Division of Information Technology (DoIT), University Libraries, and many faculty members. Its official opening, to be announced soon, will take place during this semester.
Excellent Faculty, Excellent Teaching (EFECT) Initiative
The Excellent Faculty, Excellent Teaching (EFECT) initiative will be focused on mentoring junior faculty in teaching effectiveness. New colleagues will be able to arrange for peer observations co-conducted by senior faculty and staff members from the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT). In addition to receiving feedback from these assessments, mentees will also receive ongoing guidance from their faculty mentors and the CELT staff. EFECT will strengthen the effectiveness of our educational programs, enhance student success, and allow our new colleagues every opportunity to excel as educators and program builders.