President's Announcement

To: Lehigh community members
From: Alice Gast and Pat Farrell

You will recall that about this time last year, our campus community was discussing the extraordinarily challenging global economic situation and its effect on Lehigh, and we agreed that it was essential that we continue to move forward on long-term goals, especially those that directly support our mission of teaching, research, and service. We announced specific new initiatives that evolved from our campus community's strategic thinking and are contained in our ten-year strategic plan. We remain confident that our plan will enable us to build upon our momentum and begin to move forward on our long-term goals.

Last fall, we announced new investments in endowed graduate fellowships, innovation grants and core competency grants to begin working toward achieving our goals. We also established Presidential Endowed Chairs for professorships in health-related fields. We have established a $3 million endowment for each of two new professorships to be filled by an inter-college search process launched in two areas: sciences and engineering and social sciences and humanities.

The searches for these two Presidential Endowed Chairs will be conducted differently from what we have done in the past. These will be open searches crossing college, and department lines, with a focus on talent and leadership in these health areas.

We are pleased to announce the committees serving under the leadership of faculty co-chairs. Both committees are actively seeking input from the community regarding these professorships.

Presidential Endowed Chair: Professorship in Health-related Social Sciences / Humanities

Search Co-Chairs:

George DuPaul, Department Chair, Education and Human Services and Professor, School Psychology
Judith Lasker, Department Chair and N.E.H. Distinguished Professor, Sociology and Anthropology

Committee Members:

Grace Caskie, Frank Hook Assistant Professor, Counseling Psychology
Mary Beth Deily, Professor, Economics and Director, M.S. Health and BioPharmaceutical Economics Program
Beth Dolan, Associate Professor, English and Director of Health, Medicine and Society Program
Diane Hyland, Department Chair and Professor, Psychology
Laura Olson, Professor, Political Science
Lloyd Steffen, University Chaplain and Professor, Religion Studies and Director, Center for Dialogue, Ethics and Spirituality

Presidential Endowed Chair: Professorship in Health-related Sciences / Engineering

Search Co-Chairs:

Filbert Bartoli, Department Chair, Chandler Weaver Chair and Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Lynne Cassimeris, Professor, Biological Sciences

Committee Members:

Ned Heindel, Howard S. Bunn Professor, Chemistry
Anand Jagota, Professor, Chemical Engineering, and Director of Bioengineering and Life Sciences Program
Himanshu Jain, Theodore L. Diamond Distinguished Chair in Engineering and Applied Science, Professor, Materials Science and Engineering and Director of International Materials Institute for New Functionality in Glass
Linda Lowe-Krentz, Professor, Biological Sciences
Svetlana Tatic-Lucic, Associate Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Tamás Terlaky, Department Chair, George N. and Soteria Kledaras '87 Endowed Chair and Professor, Industrial and Systems Engineering
Dimitrios Vavylonis, Assistant Professor, Physics

Web sites have been created for each search and can be found at http://www.lehigh.edu/healthsearches/scienceandengineering and
http://www.lehigh.edu/healthsearches/socialscienceandhumanities.

The committees are creating position profiles for each chair and the final versions will be posted to the web sites shortly. In the meantime, the search committees are seeking nominations for internal and external candidates for these endowed professorships and welcome your input. Details for how to submit nominations can be found on the search web sites.

Thank you for your participation in these important searches.