Dear colleagues:
Please join us in welcoming Wendy Heller as the most recent Fellow in the Presidential Fellows Program. The Fellows program is designed to support faculty members from the three universities whose interests aligns with one or more System-wide strategic initiatives.
As her initial project, Wendy will be working closely with the VPAA office to coordinate the Leadership Initiative for Women Faculty. This important initiative is focused on reducing barriers to the advancement of women to positions of academic leadership.
Wendy is a Professor of Psychology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Urbana and currently on leave from her position as the Department Head. She is affiliated with the Neuroscience program, the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, the Gender and Women’s Studies program, and the Carle Illinois College of Medicine. She was named a Fellow for the Association of Psychological Science in 2009 and was elected President of the Society for Research in Psychopathology, serving from 2019-2021. Wendy’s research focuses on neural mechanisms associated with emotion-cognition interactions and their implications for psychopathology with a particular interest in anxiety and depression. She holds a BA in Spanish and Psychology with Honors from the University of Pennsylvania and an MA and PhD in Biopsychology from the University of Chicago.
Over the past several years, Wendy has served the university in several important roles, including serving as a Provost Fellow and Chair of the Drive Committee. She received Urbana’s Larine Y. Cowan Make a Difference Award for remarkable leadership and commitment to diversity. In 2019, she was awarded the Executive Officer Distinguished Leadership Award and was a member of the 2019-20 cohort of the President’s Executive Leadership Program. She is Vice-President of the Mindful Teacher Foundation of Champaign-Urbana and an Illinois Public Voices Fellow of the OpEd Project.
We are delighted to have Wendy join as a Presidential Fellow.
Tim Killeen, President, University of Illinois System
Avijit Ghosh, Interim Executive Vice President and Vice President of Academic Affairs, University of Illinois System
