While Drexel has a wealth of talent among its faculty, few faculty members have the opportunity to explore senior administration and make meaningful contributions to advancing strategic initiatives at the University level. The Office of the Provost is pleased to offer the Provost Fellows program to provide exceptional faculty with an expansive range of leadership experiences and to harness faculty expertise in advancing the goals of our University.

Role

A Provost Fellow is a faculty member who partners with senior administration to spearhead a project critical to Drexel’s success. As part of the program, Fellows will become familiar with university-wide academic initiatives, implementation of strategic initiatives, budget planning, and challenges in higher education.

Fellows will continue to engage in their departmental teaching and research responsibilities and will be provided with appropriate release time and administrative resources to facilitate the leadership of a special project. Projects may extend an entire academic year, a single term or more. Fellows will meet bi-weekly with the senior administrator directing their project and participate in Provost Fellow-specific programming. 

2021-2022 Provost Fellows

The Office of the Provost is pleased to recognize the following four faculty experts as its 2021-2022 cohort of Provost Fellows.

Christian Jordal, PHD, LMFT, CST-S

Clinical Professor of Counseling and Family Therapy
Interim Department Chair, Counseling and Family Therapy

Partnering with Shivanthi Anandan, PhD, vice provost for undergraduate education, Jordal will assess existing university infrastructure that supports current articulation agreements with community colleges, including organizations’ responsibilities, personnel, policies and procedures. He will also assess the scope of articulation agreements across the University and identify existing cross-college articulation opportunities.

Faculty Profile

Dierdre McMahon, PhD

Teaching Professor of English
Chair of the Online Learning Council Faculty Fellows

Partnering with Shivanthi Anandan, PhD, vice provost for undergraduate education, McMahon will collect data on existing undergraduate online program design with a focus on curricular agility and inclusivity. She will also develop a template and set of best practices for online and modality-neutral program development for use by academic units as they plan to launch any new undergraduate degree programs.  

Faculty Profile

Franco Montalto, PhD

Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Partnering with Lucy Kerman, senior vice provost for university and community partnerships, Montalto will provide leadership for the campus-wide programming of Climate Year 2021 and will build a bridge between Climate Year and the future operations of The Environmental Collaboratory. Advancing the progress made in the first nine months of Climate Year, Montalto will undertake activities such as continuing outreach to academic partners to facilitate new interdisciplinary clusters for research, teaching and Collaboratory projects, particularly with colleagues in health, engineering, design, social sciences and external strategic partners. He will also develop a database of real-world, applied projects in climate and sustainability that can be embedded in curricula across the University and used to recruit undergraduate and graduate students.

Faculty Profile

Asta Zelenkauskaite, PhD

Associate Professor of Communication
Graduate Faculty Member, Communication, Culture & Media

Partnering with Rogelio Miñana, PhD, vice provost for global engagement, Zelenkauskaite will analyze the Office of Global Engagement’s communication and branding strategy. This may include mapping and analyzing the existing web presence and branding/promotional materials, proposing an alternative communications and branding strategy, and designing ways through official communications, web presence and social media to promote the office’s programs. 

Faculty Profile