Dr. Stella Tsirka Appointed Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs

Dear Members of the Stony Brook University Community,

I am pleased to announce that Dr. Stella Tsirka has been appointed as the Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs (VPFA), effective October 15, 2014, to provide a focal point for matters pertaining to faculty hiring and retention, developing faculty careers, enhancing faculty productivity, cultivating academic leadership and service, and recognizing faculty excellence.

In her role as the VPFA, Dr. Tsirka will work closely with our senior leadership team and me on faculty hiring and retention. She will develop and coordinate faculty career development initiatives, including new faculty orientation and mentoring and training programs, with emphasis on the large number of recently hired junior faculty. She will also work closely with me to provide oversight to interdisciplinary centers and institutes reporting to the Provost. In collaboration with the deans and the OVPR, she will nurture interdisciplinary faculty clusters, the FAHSS program, and collaborations of west campus faculty with the Health Sciences, BNL and CSHL.

Stella will coordinate the promotion and tenure evaluation processes across all schools and colleges, and work with the Senates to improve the promotion and tenure guidelines for interdisciplinary areas. She will collaborate with the deans in developing appropriate faculty workload standards and policies, as well as in analyzing, recognizing and enhancing faculty productivity. She will enhance administrative processes and procedures for faculty matters, and advise deans and chairs on faculty policies, rights and responsibilities. Stella will steward programs to recognize faculty excellence, and cultivate academic leadership and service.

Dr. Tsirka has a record of long-standing and dedicated University service. She is committed to graduate education, serving for eleven years as Director for the Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology graduate program and its associated NIH T32 training grant. Stella is also co-directing the newly-established Scholars in Bio-Medical Sciences program. She has served on mentoring committees, the School of Medicine Dean’s Leadership Advisory Group, and as Chair of the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC). Stella has participated in many faculty and administrative searches both in the School of Medicine and at the institutional level, and most recently chaired the Dean of the Graduate School Search Committee. She has been a member of the NIH and American Heart Association study sections and a board member of national foundations and international organizations. Stella was also instrumental in the fundraising efforts to establish the SBU Center for Hellenic Studies and chaired the interdisciplinary search for the two endowed faculty positions.

Dr. Tsirka received her B.S. in Chemistry and her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. She then pursued postdoctoral studies at the University of California, San Francisco and SBU. She was appointed Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at SBU in 1998, until joining the Pharmacology Department in 2000, where she is currently a Professor. Dr. Tsirka’s scholarly work focuses on studying the interactions between the nervous and the immune systems in chronic and acute neurodegenerative diseases such as multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury and stroke. She was part of the team combining Geosciences, Pharmacology, Chemistry, Physics, Marine Sciences and Medicine that brought to SBU its first NSF IGERT to examine how environmental factors impact health. Evolving from that effort, she is now collaborating on the NASA-funded RIS4E program initiated by the Department of Geosciences.

Please join me in congratulating Stella on her new role.

Best,

Dennis N. Assanis
Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs