Dear Colleagues,
I am pleased to announce that I have chosen three faculty members who will serve as the 2019-2020 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Provost Fellows: Professor Amy Ando in Agricultural and Consumer Economics, Professor Ollie Watts Davis in Music and Professor Eva Pomerantz in Psychology.
The Provost Fellows program was created to further develop leadership skills at the university level for some of our most accomplished tenured faculty. Each Provost Fellow focuses on a critical campus strategic initiative to ensure we are living up to our full potential in our scholarly missions. These initiatives are designed to further strengthen their individual interests and career goals.
Professor Ando will focus on Evaluating Teaching Effectiveness. Before joining Illinois, she worked as a Fellow in Resources for the Future, where she now serves as a University Fellow. Ando’s research focuses primarily on the economics of species and habitat conservation. That work includes research to inform optimal conservation planning, understand actual conservation behavior and develop planning tools to reduce the uncertainty in conservation outcomes from climate change.
Professor Davis will focus on Undergraduate Education and Success. In 2008, she was named a University Scholar, received her second Campus Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2014 and was awarded the Outstanding Faculty Leadership Award in 2018. Since her New York debut at Carnegie Hall, she has appeared with leading orchestras, at festivals and for scholar residencies. Professor Davis’s scholarship focus is the sacred music of Black Americans and the use of art forms to inspire comprehensive learning outcomes among youth.
Professor Pomerantz will focus on Promotion and Tenure. Her research focuses on how parents can facilitate children’s motivation and achievement in school. In addition to studying families in the United States, she also studies families in China to identify why children in East Asia outrank children in the West in terms of achievement. Dr. Pomerantz’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Child Development, as well as other funding agencies.
I look forward to working with each of them, and I hope you will all help me welcome them into their new roles.
Sincerely,
Andreas C. Cangellaris
Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Provost