Oct. 3, 2022
Vice Provost for Faculty & Academic Affairs Eliza Pavalko has announced her return to the Bloomington Department of Sociology faculty in the spring 2023 semester. She has served in the vice provost role since 2015.
Pavalko is the Allen D. and Polly S. Grimshaw Professor of Sociology in the College of Arts and Sciences. She joined the Indiana University faculty in 1991, chairing the Department of Sociology from 2009 to 2014.
Under her tutelage, the campus has increased faculty support and leadership development; helped lead retention, dual career efforts, and inclusion-focused workshops for faculty hiring committees; and expanded participation in a range of programs to support work.
“We are incredibly fortunate to have had the benefit of Eliza’s leadership in this role for the past several years,” said Provost and Executive Vice President Rahul Shrivastav. “Her work to foster faculty mentoring, community, and professional development has increased productivity, workplace satisfaction, and retention, truly modeling what it means to support faculty throughout the entire arc of their careers.”
OVPFAA provides support for mentoring, active engagement with colleagues and students, and opportunities for professional development, helping faculty members achieve professional excellence. It supports faculty in their career paths, sponsors awards and competitions to nurture and to recognize excellence and provides resources for living and working in Bloomington. The office also compiles, revises, and makes accessible policies and procedures that regulate academic activities on campus.
Among the successful OVPFAA programs that support faculty careers and build community is the Scholarly Writing Program. The program launched in 2013—with 17 members—as an accountability group for faculty writing for publication and preparing for promotion and tenure. Today, up to 300 faculty participate each semester and the group plays an important role in retention.
IU’s continued partnership with the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity sponsors junior or mid-career faculty for the Faculty Success Program, designed to provide valuable skills that result in increased productivity and improved work-life balance (participants have reported more than 90 percent satisfaction in each area). OVPFAA has also expanded coordinated campus programming with the Big Ten Academic Alliance Department Executive Officer program and in the fall of 2022, Pavalko’s office launched a Department Chairs Leadership Series to support chairs and program directors through workshops that share essential knowledge of campus policies and operations.
“It has been a joy to work with our outstanding faculty at every possible stage of their career and to participate in the shared governance of our campus,” Pavalko said. “Our faculty have worked together to expand routes of advancement for non-tenure-track faculty—the teaching professor—and to support greater equity for our graduate students. Seeing the impact of their work on faculty and student careers is quite meaningful.”
Our faculty have worked together to expand routes of advancement for non-tenure-track faculty—the teaching professor—and to support greater equity for our graduate students. Seeing the impact of their work on faculty and student careers is quite meaningful.
Eliza Pavalko
Pavalko’s research interests lie in the areas of the sociology of the life course, aging, health, work, gender, and social change. With funding from the National Institute on Aging and National Institute of Mental Health, and in collaboration with numerous graduate students and colleagues, her attention has centered on paid and unpaid work careers, health trajectories and how they are framed within institutional policies and practices, historical context, and gender regimes.
She has served as editor of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior and secretary-treasurer and section chair for the American Sociological Association Section on Aging and the Life Course. She served as director of graduate studies for the Department of Sociology and has received several teaching honors including the IU Trustees Teaching Award and the Graduate Student Mentor Award.
She received her M.S. and Ph.D. in sociology from Florida State University and was a National Institute on Aging postdoctoral trainee at the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina.
An internal search for the new vice provost will be conducted immediately with a target start date of Jan. 1, 2023. Faculty who are interested in applying should visit the posting at: https://indiana.peopleadmin.com/postings/14283.
Provost Professor of Sociology Jane McLeod, Executive Associate Dean at the College of Arts and Sciences, will chair the search committee. The committee includes representatives of faculty, staff, and students at IU Bloomington. In addition to McLeod, they are:
