Nominations are open for the ninth cohort of the Chancellor Faculty Fellows, a program that awards select faculty with financial and institutional support at a key moment in their career.
Established in 2014, the Chancellor Faculty Fellows is a competitive program for Vanderbilt faculty that is open to newly tenured associate professors and to faculty of the equivalent rank in the law school. The program’s goal is to further the professional development of the awardee through strategic financial, administrative and community support. Those selected hold the title for two years and receive $40,000 each year to support their research, scholarship and creative expression.
In the past eight years, 96 fellows have been named from a wide array of disciplines, reflecting the breadth of Vanderbilt’s intellectual and creative endeavors. Fellows have made remarkable use of the program’s support, as evidenced by the inaugural cohort in 2015:
- Muktar Aliyu, professor of health policy, is director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health, where he received funding from the National Institutes of Health to improve the treatment of epilepsy in children in Nigeria.
- Scott Guelcher, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, serves as director of the Vanderbilt Center for Bone Biology and leads the Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering Laboratory, developing transformative therapies for musculoskeletal tissue disease and trauma.
- Kelly Holley-Bockelmann, Stevenson Chair in Physics and Astronomy, serves as co-director of the Fisk-Vanderbilt Masters-to-PhD Bridge Program and is one of the leaders of NASA’s Laser Interferometer Space Antenna project, which has the power to fundamentally reshape astronomy.
- Peter Kolkay, associate professor of bassoon, is heralded by The Washington Post and The New York Times as a preeminent virtuoso, with performances at the Lincoln Center and a recent collaboration with founding Pink Floyd bassist Roger Waters.
- Borden Lacy, Edward and Nancy Fody Chair in Pathology, serves as director of the Vanderbilt Center for Structural Biology and leads a lab where researchers are developing life-saving therapeutic and prevention strategies against bacterial toxins.
- Bunmi Olatunji, Gertrude Conway Vanderbilt Chair in Psychology, recently received an appointment as associate provost for doctoral programs and serves as director of clinical training and director of the Emotion and Anxiety Research Laboratory.
- Andrea Page-McCaw, professor of cell and developmental biology, is an elected fellow of the AAAS, serves as director of graduate studies and leads a lab where researchers are shedding new light on how carcinoma cells form in the body.
- Kristopher Preacher, Lois Autrey Betts Chair in Education and Human Development, is among the most highly cited researchers at Vanderbilt, where he focuses on the development and application of quantitative methods in the social sciences.
- Sean Seymore, Centennial Professor of Law, is an often-published expert in patent law and intellectual property whose research focuses on how patent law and policy should evolve in response to advances in science and technology.
- Daniel Sharfstein, Dick and Martha Lansden Chair in Law, is co-director of the George Barrett Social Justice Program and a celebrated author, whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Slate and the Yale Law Review, among many other law journals.
- Rachel Teukolsky, professor of English, is a preeminent scholar of Victorian literature and art and received the National Endowment for the Humanities’ coveted Summer Stipend award, with which she produced her 2020 book, Picture World: Image, Aesthetics, and Victorian New Media.
- Sharon Weiss, Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering, directs the Vanderbilt Institute of Nanoscale Science and Engineering and is a 2021 fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Candidates are nominated by their deans or the dean’s designee for consideration by the provost and chancellor. Deans will work with their respective department chairs and faculty to conduct the nomination process.
Eligible candidates must be full-time tenured faculty who were promoted in rank with tenure within the past five years or who have their tenure effective at the start of the upcoming academic year. Detailed information about the program and eligibility is available on the Office of Faculty Affairs and Professional Education website.
Nominations must be submitted using InfoReady by March 3, 2023. Questions about the Chancellor Faculty Fellows program, including the nomination process, may be directed to Tracey George (university inquiries) or Jennifer Pietenpol (medical center inquiries). All other questions may be directed to the Office of Faculty Development.