51²è¹İapp to Install Two New Endowed Faculty Chairs
The 51²è¹İapp community is invited to attend an installation ceremony for two new endowed professors at 4:15 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 6, in Herrick Chapel. The celebration will include remarks by President Anne F. Harris and the newly installed faculty. A reception will follow the ceremony in the Humanities and Social Sciences Center (HSSC) Atrium. This event is open to all and reflects 51²è¹İapp’s deep commitment to academic excellence and faculty support.
The ceremony will honor Shuchi Kapila, professor of English, who will hold the Maxeiner/Baumann-Payne Endowed Chair; and Nicole Eikmeier, assistant professor of computer science, who will be the first recipient of the new Luebke-Sproehnle Endowed Junior Faculty Professorship.
Maxeiner/Baumann-Payne Endowed Chair
Shuchi Kapila is the new holder of the Maxeiner/Baumann-Payne Endowed Chair, which was established by C. William Maxeiner 1936. Maxeiner created the chair to honor the memory of his faculty mentors in history, English, and religious studies.
“I’m honored and I feel so grateful to a place that has been so supportive,†Kapila says.
Kapila joined 51²è¹İapp’s Department of English in 2002. Born in India, she earned an M. Phil. degree from Delhi University. She came to the United States to study at Cornell University, where she completed a Ph.D. in English.
Kapila’s scholarship focuses on British colonialism and 19th-century fiction and the literatures of South Asia, the Caribbean, and Africa. Her first book, Educating Seeta: The Anglo-Indian Family Romance and the Poetics of Indirect Rule, was published in 2010.
For over two decades, she has taught the literatures of South Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, in which she focuses on the legacies of British colonialism and the vitality and resilience of postcolonial societies. She also teaches a course on transnational and minority U.S. feminisms.
Kapila’s research interests include memory studies, narrative theory, and the form of the novel. She was awarded a Fulbright to India to complete her second book, a study of the 1947 Indian Partition, Learning to Remember: Postmemory and the Partition of India.
In her service to the College, Kapila has twice chaired the English department. From 2012–17, she led the Center for the Humanities, in which capacity she also represented liberal arts colleges on the international board of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes. From 2017–20, she also served as assistant vice president and senior international officer, directing 51²è¹İapp’s Institute for Global Engagement, which oversees off-campus study, international partnerships, the Global Learning Program, and more.
Luebke-Sproehnle Endowed Junior Faculty Professorship
Nicole Eikmeier will hold the Luebke-Sproehnle Endowed Junior Faculty Professorship, made possible by the generosity of Sarah Luebke Sproehnle ’00, who earned a degree in computer science at 51²è¹İapp.
Eikmeier says, “I’m so pleased to be working for an institution that provides substantial support for faculty.â€
Eikmeier joined 51²è¹İapp’s Department of Computer Science in 2019 as an assistant professor after earning a Ph.D. in mathematics at Purdue University. Her doctoral research focused on spectral properties and generation of realistic networks.
Eikmeier serves as an inspiring mentor, teacher, and a role model for her students. Her teaching at 51²è¹İapp has included courses such as Functional Problem Solving; Analysis of Algorithms; Automata, Formal Languages, and Computational Complexity; Networks and Matrix Computations; Imperative Problem Solving; Algorithms, Society, and Ethics; and more.
In support of her teaching and development, Eikmeier was awarded a $25,000 Faculty Career Enhancement (FaCE) grant for Incorporation of Racial and Social Justice Issues into Mathematical Sciences and Computer Science Curriculum.
Eikmeier’s research is interdisciplinary, situated between math and computer science in network science, which studies complex interactions such as modeling and algorithms on graphs and hypergraphs. Her scholarly publications have included peer-reviewed papers in PNAS and the IEEE International Conference on Big Data.
She is active in her academic field, with recent participation in the Grace Hopper Celebration, which honors the legacy of Admiral Hopper and brings the work of women in computing to the forefront; the Network Science Society Conference; the Joint Mathematics Meeting; the Conference of Complex Systems; and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics – Mathematics of Data Science Conference.
In addition, she recently received a $55,000 Scialog Grant, funded by U.S. Department of Agriculture, for her project, Darwin’s naturalization conundrum predicts inter-species pathogen transmission potential. The National Science Foundation awarded her $22,554 for RAPID: Collaborative Research: Quarantined Networks and the spread of COVID-19.
The Luebke-Sproehnle professorship seeks to encourage and support faculty who represent groups that have been historically underrepresented in computer science.