Hope College has appointed two current faculty members to new endowed professorships beginning with the start of the coming school year.
Dr. Stacy L. Jackson has been appointed the Kenneth J. Weller Professor of Management, and Dr. Anne R. Larsen has been appointed the Lavern '39 and Betty De Pree '41 Van Kley Professor of French.
The two new endowments reflect the college's emphasis on adding more of the professorships to recognize outstanding faculty members, along with providing them with funding for summer research projects as well as some salary support. The college now has a total of 20 endowed chairs for faculty and three endowed administrative positions, and is seeking to establish more.
"An endowed professorship represents an advanced stamp of approval on professors who have proven their worth to the academy," said Dr. James E. Bultman, president of Hope College. "A major initiative at Hope has been to secure more endowed professorships that will reward, recognize and retain some of our most distinguished professors."
Bultman noted that the college is grateful to those who, as through the Weller and Van Kley professorships, help provide an exceptional education for students by supporting talented and dedicated faculty. "It's a very visionary act and generous act for a couple or person to establish an endowed professorship that will ensure long-term quality teaching, scholarship and attentiveness to the mission of the institution," he said.
The Ken Weller Endowed Professorship honors distinguished teaching in management. It was established through a lead gift by Jim Jurries, who is a former student, and Virginia Jurries of Holland to recognize Weller for his impact at Hope as faculty mentor. Weller, who is a 1948 Hope graduate, was a member of the Hope economics and business administration faculty from 1949 to 1969. He subsequently served as president of Central College in Pella, Iowa, from 1969 until retiring in 1990.
Weller has received a variety of awards in recognition of his career, including decoration by the Queen of the Netherlands as a knight in the Order of Orange Nassau and recognition in 1988 as one of the top 100 college presidents in the nation. From Hope, he received a Distinguished Alumni Award in 1971 and an honorary degree in 1983, and the "Hope for Humanity" Award from the college's alumni H-Club in 2008. He and his wife, Shirely, established the college's "Vanderbush-Weller Development Fund" award, first presented in 2000, in honor of longtime Hope professor and football coach Alvin Vanderbush, who retired in 1972 and died on Feb. 20, 2005.
The Lavern and Betty De Pree Van Kley Endowed Professorship was established by the Van Kleys to recognize an outstanding teacher-scholar who exemplifies in personal and professional life the Christian values which have marked the Hope experience since the college's founding. The professorship is open to faculty from any department, with appointment for a four-year term.
Raised in Zeeland, Lavern and Betty Van Kley each attended Hope for a year, with Lavern going on to Loyola School of Dentistry and a career in dentistry. They have been active in the life of the college for many years, and provided a leadership gift for the Van Kley Museum in the college's A. Paul Schaap Science Center, a biology museum that is a resource for the college in addition to being popular with school groups and children attending science camps at the college. In recognition of their involvement in the life of the college, they received theannual Second Century President's Award from Hope.
Jackson has been a member of the Hope faculty since 2007. His teaching responsibilities include the courses "Perspectives on Management" and "Management Seminar." His research focuses on strategy, structure, leadership and executive team development primarily within firms that aspire to integrate specific value priorities in competitive markets. He also focuses on the role of power and politics in the effectiveness of leaders in creating organizational change.
He began his career at NASA in Houston, Texas, as an internal organization development consultant. His subsequent consulting experience includes serving as a senior manager for Ernst & Young Management Consulting and as a practice leader for Hewitt Associates. His academic roles have included serving as assistant dean and professor of organizational behavior at Washington University in St. Louis' Olin School of Business and as professor of management at Calvin College in Grand Rapids. In addition to teaching at Hope, is currently a visiting professor of management and organizations at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business.
Jackson has received numerous teaching awards as well as recognition in "Business Week's" review of outstanding faculty in top-25 business programs. His views have been citied in media sources such as "Business Week," "MBA Jungle" and "The Wall Street Journal." He published a variety of articles in professional journals and various book chapters, and is completing his first book.
He is active in consulting and executive education in North America, Europe and Asia regarding topics of strategy, structure, leadership, executive team development and organizational effectiveness. He works regularly with public, private and non-profit firms who manage the difficulties of focusing on strategic growth while maintaining values they consider sacrosanct. He is a frequent speaker in leadership development programs, annual officers' meetings and academic conferences. His clients have included organizations such as AB InBev, Bunge, Emerson, Enterprise Rent-a-Car, Herman Miller, Occidental, Southwest Airlines, Texas Instruments, Time Warner & WellPoint.
Jackson graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a B.A. in 1989. He completed his M.A. and Ph.D. at RiceUniversity in 1993 and 1998 respectively.
Larsen has been a member of the Hope faculty since 1984. Her teaching interests include intermediate French language and culture; the myth and reality of Paris; French and Francophone drama; Francophone literature of Algeria, West Africa and the Caribbean; literary theory; early modern French society; and writings by French women intellectuals. Her research interests include French Renaissance and 17th-century women writers, and early modern French drama.
She is the editor of multiple books, including four collections of articles on early modern women writers and four volumes featuring works by Madeleine and Catherine des Roches, a mother and daughter who wrote in multiple genres in addressing issues of the day in 16th century Poitiers, France. She has also published many scholarly articles and book chapters, and more than 50 book reviews.
Larsen has presented papers at national and international conferences in Canada, France and the Netherlands as well as in the United States. She is active in professional associations including the American Association of Teachers of French; Société française des Etudes du Seizième Siècle; SIEFAR (Société Internationale pour l'Etude des Femmes de l'Ancien Régime), of which she is the U.S.-Canada treasurer; Renaissance Society of America; Women in French; Society for the Study of Early Modern Women; and Sixteenth Century Society and Conference. She is also currently on the editorial board of Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature.
National recognition of her work has included two year-long fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in support of her research, 1997-98 and 2004-05, an NEH Summer Stipend, as well as several NEH and American Philosophical Society travel grants to archives in France. She has also attended five NEH Summer Seminars and an NEH Summer Institute for college teachers. She received the 2008 "Roland Bainton Prize for Reference Works" from the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference for the book "Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance: Italy, France, and England," which she co-edited, and the 2007 "Translation or Teaching Edition Award" from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women" for her book "From Mother and Daughter: Poems, Dialogues, and Letters of Les Dames des Roches." She has spent sabbatical leaves at Notre Dame, Harvard and UCLA.
She graduated from Hope with a French major and a Spanish minor in 1970, and completed her M.A. and Ph.D. at Columbia University in 1971 and 1975 respectively. Prior to returning to Hope to teach, she taught for more than a decade at Colgate University and the University of Tulsa.