Only 16 of Auburn University’s 1,330 faculty members currently hold the prestigious title of Alumni Professor, and six of those 16 are in the College of Agriculture. As is often the case, the college boasts more Alumni Professors than any other college or school on campus.
The two most recent professorship awardees in the college are plant pathologist Kira Bowen in the Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology and weed scientist Scott McElroy in the Department of Crop, Soil and Environmental Sciences. They began their appointments with the 2017-18 academic year and will be officially recognized in late February during the Office of the Provost’s 2018 faculty awards dinner.
“The college has regularly had its faculty members selected for this important award,” Amy Wright, associate dean for instruction, said. “That’s a good representation of the strong programs our faculty members maintain in all three areas of the land-grant mission.”
Alumni Professorships are sponsored by the Auburn Alumni Association with funds from an association endowment and recognize some of the university’s most innovative teachers, researchers and scholars who have made and are making exceptional research, instruction and outreach contributions. Professorships are five-year, nonrenewable awards that carry annual salary supplements of $3,500.
Bowen and McElroy join ranks with the college’s four other current Alumni Professors: plant pathologist Joseph Kloepper, whose term began with the 2016-17 academic year, 2015-16 awardees Oladiran Fasina, professor, and professor and department head Sushil Adhikari, both in biosystems engineering; and agricultural economics professor Valentina Hartarska, who has served as Alumni Professor since 2014-15.
“The Alumni Professorship is a highly coveted award on the Auburn campus, so the sheer number of Alumni Professors in the College of Agriculture speaks volume about the quality of our faculty, their research productivity and their overall impact,” said Associate Dean for Research and Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station Associate Director Henry Fadamiro.
Fadamiro is one of many College of Agriculture faculty members to have held Alumni Professorships in previous years.
The alumni association sponsors up to 25 Alumni Professors at any given time.
