Meet the chair holders

By Barbara D. Kiernan, M.A.'90

The growing number of endowed professorships at Fairfield signals the University's ever-emerging excellence, as reflected by the scholarship and service of the distinguished faculty members who hold these chairs. Funded through generous gifts to Fairfield University's endowment, such chairs offer their holders far more than the prestige of a named professorship. Most also include some combination of budget, stipend, or reduced teaching load that allows the holders to devote more time to research and, in some cases, the ability to create special programs for the broader community.

Dr. Arjun Chaudhuri, Rev. Thomas R. Fitzgerald, S.J., Professor of Marketing

When Dr. Chaudhuri was installed in 2004, he confessed to a few schoolboy antics that would, today, leave the Jesuits who educated him in India scratching their heads in wonder. Arjun Chaudhuri a serious scholar? Holder of an academic chair named for a Jesuit, much less a past president of Fairfield University? "Actually, I'm quite happy about this turn of events!" says Dr. Chaudhuri, who attributes this "reform" to the Jesuits. The Fitzgerald Chair in the Charles F. Dolan School of Business comes with a research budget that permits additional conference and workshop participation, and allows for student research assistants to help with data collection. "Academic chairs indicate that a university cares about scholarship in addition to teaching," he says. "They provide an impetus to all faculty to do the best scholarly work."

Dr. Edward Deak, Roger M. Lynch Professor of Economics

"Endowed professorships are an important talking point in attracting new faculty," observes Dr. Deak, "because they convey an element of prestige to the work done by department members. They also support activities that would not normally be funded by departmental budgets." Last fall, for example, he was able to survey damage done by Hurricane Katrina and interview people about their loss of property and income, the disruption of their lives, and their inability to collect for storm damage and quickly start rebuilding. As a faculty expert frequently called upon by the media, Dr. Deak has already been interviewed about the economic impact of the situation he observed, and how those problems and concerns would play out if a natural disaster were to strike the northeast.

Lucy Katz, J.D., Robert C. Wright Professor of Business Law, Ethics, and Dispute Resolution

"Endowed professorships create a sense that the University cares about excellence in a variety of endeavors, and seeks to recognize those who contribute in special ways to our mission," she says. Prof. Katz, an attorney who joined the Dolan School of Business faculty in 1983, specializes in legal conflicts in developing countries and, more important, how their governments and multinational businesses are using arbitration to resolve international business disputes. "This is a way for former socialist countries to participate in the global economy," says Prof. Katz, who visited Vietnam in 2004, Cuba the year before, and will use a portion of her chair funds to do similar research this summer in China.

Dr. Gregory Koutmos, Gerald M. Levin Professor of Finance

"As chair holder, I have been able to present my research at a number of international conferences," says Dr. Koutmos. Such activities, coupled with his prolific publication record in top business journals, add to the prestige of the Dolan School of Business in which he teaches. Holding the professorship has allowed Dr. Koutmos to bring a number of research collaborators from other universities to campus for lectures and presentations to graduate-level classes. Clearly Dr. Koutmos' reputation helped contribute to the Dolan School's listing in the Princeton Review's Best 237 Business Schools for 2006. "The presence of named professors," he observes, "also makes it easier to hire new faculty and attract high quality students."

Dr. Paul Lakeland, Rev. Aloysius P. Kelley, S.J., Professor of Catholic Studies

"My chair," says Dr. Lakeland, "is definitely tied to programming, to raising awareness of the Catholic traditions (religious and intellectual) on campus and beyond." Because his chair affords some release time from teaching, Dr. Lakeland has run between 12 and 15 events each semester this year, including a Living Theology series geared to members of the local Church, an academic lecture series, and a host of activities (lectures and an upcoming conference) that represent Fairfield University's celebration of the worldwide Jesuit Jubilee Year. Dr. Lakeland has also completed the groundwork for an academic minor in Catholic Studies in the CAS, which will begin accepting students in fall 2006.

Dr. Winston Tellis, Stephen and Camille Schramm Professor of Business

"The stature of an endowed chair indicates the maturity and academic status of an institution and draws attention to the research and accomplishments of the person whose honor it is to occupy the chair," says Dr. Tellis. His stipend as chair has permitted travel to potential service-learning sites in the United States and in developing countries. This travel builds on previous research that involved his business students in projects that address structures of poverty while helping the poor of Haiti and Nicaragua. Now in year two of his three-year term, Dr. Tellis notes a significant increase in speaking engagements and the satisfaction of being asked to serve locally on the Bridgeport Area Foundation's distribution committee.

Dr. Ellen Umansky, Carl and Dorothy Bennett Professor of Judaic Studies

When this chair was established in 1994, the intention was to provide the University's mostly Christian students with an academic grounding in Judaism, taught from a Jewish perspective. As the first Bennett chair holder, Dr. Ellen Umanksy has created an interdisciplinary undergraduate minor in the CAS that now includes introductory courses on Judaism and Jewish history, art, and literature; two years of modern Hebrew; and more advanced courses on the Holocaust, Jewish-Christian relations, and Jewish theology. She also serves as director of Fairfield's Carl and Dorothy Bennett Center for Judaic Studies, which sponsors about 10 public lectures and special events a year as well as a 10-week noncredit "Lunch and Learn" course each spring (the latter co-sponsored by the Jewish Community Center of Greater Bridgeport). "In my view," she says, "this program has added further richness to the offerings of the Department of Religious Studies and to the cultural and intellectual life of the University as a whole."

Dr. Meredith Wallace, Elizabeth DeCamp McInerny Professor of Health Sciences and associate professor of nursing

"In the case of this chair," Dr. Wallace notes, "the emphasis is clearly on enhancing knowledge surrounding health and illness and in promoting student interest and scholarship toward this goal." Now in year two of a three-year term that rotates among nursing and science faculty, Dr. Wallace has written and received five grants to strengthen the School of Nursing's geriatric courses, and has published one book, three chapters, and five articles. Two of her recent graduate students had their work published in the Encyclopedia of Nursing Research, four undergraduate students have presented posters at regional conferences, and six have co-authored articles appearing in refereed journals including Geriatric Nursing.