IU Bloomington names 2014-15 Academic Leadership Program fellows

  • July 22, 2014

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Four Indiana University Bloomington faculty members have been selected as 2014-15 fellows for the Academic Leadership Program, which helps develop leadership skills of professors who are strong candidates for pursuing careers in academic administration.

The program is sponsored by the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, made up of the universities in the Big Ten conference and the University of Chicago. Participants attend three seminars hosted by Committee on Institutional Cooperation institutions and take part in campus-based meetings with administrative leaders.

This year's IU Bloomington fellows are:

  • Fritz Breithaupt, professor and chair of Germanic studies in the College of Arts and Sciences.
  • Sharlene Newman, associate professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences.
  • Christiana Ochoa, professor of law and the Charles L. Whistler Faculty Fellow in the Maurer School of Law.
  • Cassidy Sugimoto, assistant professor of  information and library science in the School of Informatics and Computing.

Member universities select faculty to participate in the Academic Leadership Program, which leverages the resources of Committee on Institutional Cooperation member institutions to provide training in academic administration.

"The CIC Academic Leadership Program enables Indiana University Bloomington to invest in the professional development of current and future academic administrators," said Tom Gieryn, IU Bloomington vice provost for faculty and academic affairs. "I am very pleased that the campus will once again have an outstanding group of faculty taking part in this outstanding program."

Fritz Breithaupt is an adjunct professor of comparative literature and an affiliated professor with the Cognitive Science Program, in addition to his appointment in Germanic studies. His scholarship provides humanities responses to work in cognitive science, addressing empathy, narrative and moral reasoning.

He has published four books, co-edited four volumes and written many articles. Currently he is writing a book on the connection between narrative thinking and moral reasoning and working on an English follow-up to his work "The Dark Sides of Empathy." He has served as interim dean of the Hutton Honors College and director of the West European Studies Institute, and he co-founded IU's European Union-Center of Excellence. He has a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University and has received Fulbright and Humboldt fellowships.

Sharlene Newman studies cognitive neuroscience and uses magnetic resonance imaging to better understand the neural underpinnings of cognition. Her research focuses on the study of language comprehension, problem-solving and planning. She is part of IU Bloomington programs in cognitive science and neuroscience.

An IU faculty member since 2004, Newman directs the university's Imaging Research Facility, which has the mission of research and education in the study of brain structure and function and how these relate to behavior. The facility provides cutting-edge research and training using multiple methods of neuroimaging. Newman has a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and was a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University.

Christiana Ochoa is a scholar of contracts and international law. Her research, which focuses on the intersections of commercial activity and human well-being, includes aspects of global governance, human rights, and law and development.

Her scholarship in these areas has been published widely, and her first documentary film was completed this spring. She is pursuing field work toward the production of a second documentary, which will focus on law as a set of tools for the realization of differing views of development. She has a J.D. from Harvard University.

Cassidy Sugimoto researches within the domain of scholarly communication and scientometrics, examining the formal and informal ways in which knowledge producers consume and disseminate scholarship, particularly within the context of higher education. She has co-edited two volumes and has published 50 journal articles on this topic.

Her work has been presented at numerous conferences and has received research funding from the National Science Foundation, Institute for Museum and Library Services, and the Sloan Foundation, among other agencies. Sugimoto is actively involved in teaching and service and has been rewarded in these areas with an Indiana University Trustees Teaching Award (2014) and a national service award from the Association for Information Science and Technology (2009).  She has a Ph.D. in information and library science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

About the Academic Leadership Program

Established in 1989, the Academic Leadership Program has developed leadership and managerial skills of nearly 1,000 fellows, many of whom have gone on to serve with distinction as college presidents, provosts and deans. The program is oriented to address the challenges of academic administration at major research universities and to help faculty members prepare to meet them.

Related Links

Fritz Breithaupt

Fritz Breithaupt

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Sharlene Newman

Sharlene Newman

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Christiana Ochoa

Christiana Ochoa | Photo by Ann Schertz

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Cassidy Sugimoto

Cassidy Sugimoto

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Media Contacts

Steve Hinnefeld