College of Arts & Letters Dean Christopher P. Long has named Dr. Amy DeRogatis, professor of Religion and American Culture in the Department of Religious Studies, as Faculty Excellence Advocate (FEA) for the College.
The Faculty Excellence Advocates (FEAs) are faculty members who are key “drivers” of faculty quality and diversity in each college. They build close working relationships with their faculty colleagues, department chairs and deans, so as to create a climate that promotes quality, inclusiveness, alignment, objectivity, consistency and transparency of all academic human resource policies and practices.
Of her appointment, Professor DeRogatis says, “I am looking forward to building a more inclusive and supportive faculty culture in the College of Arts & Letters.”
She notes that in their liaison role between MSU Academic Human Resources and their respective colleges, FEAs primarily work on the interconnected areas of communication; design and implementation of improvement tools and resources; and data collection.
“Professor DeRogatis has long been committed to cultivating practices of inclusion in her scholarship and teaching,” says College of Arts & Letters Dean Christopher P. Long “I am happy she has agreed to bring this committment to her role as FEA. Embodying habits of inclusive practice is critical as we continue to foster a culture of excellence in the College. I look forward to working with Amy who will be a vital link between the Dean’s office and our departments as we further these efforts.”
Amy DeRogatis has taught at MSU since 1998. Her principal scholarly interests are American religion and culture, nineteenth-century Protestant home missionaries, religion gender, and sexuality, American evangelicalism, and religion in the Midwest. She is the author of Saving Sex: Sexuality and Salvation in American Evangelicalism (Oxford University Press, 2014), and Moral Geography: Maps, Missionaries, and the American Frontier (Columbia University Press, 2003).
In December 2014, DeRogatis and her co-PI Isaac Weiner (OSU) received $30,000 for their Religious Soundmap Project of the Global Midwest through the Humanities Without Walls consortium, based at the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The consortium is funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This digital humanities project aims to map the religious diversity of Midwestern cities through sound.
