Co-Directors Named for Faculty Support Center

The Wally Cordes Teaching and Faculty Support Center is pleased to announce that Inza Fort and Jeannie Whayne have recently joined Paul Cronan as co-directors. Fort is replacing Norm Dennis, who has taken on responsibilities in the College of Engineering as an associate dean. She will fill out the final year of his three-year appointment to the faculty support center. Whayne has accepted a three-year appointment to fill the vacancy left when Marianne Neighbors’ term expired Aug. 12.

Inza Fort

Inza Fort is a professor of kinesiology and exercise science in the department of health, human performance and recreation in the College of Education and Health Professions. She received her B.A. and M.Ed. at Auburn University, an M.A. and C.A.S.E. at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, and the Ed.D. at the University of Arkansas.

Her teaching areas are mainly in exercise physiology, mechanics of human movement, and analytical basis of movement science. Her focus of research is in physiological and biomechanical factors related to women’s health and performance and she is also a collaborator to the Office for Studies on Aging. Fort has served in a variety of positions during her 30 years as a faculty member at the University of Arkansas.

She served a previous three-year term as co-director of the Wally Cordes Teaching and Faculty Support Center from 2003-2006 and is a member of the Teaching Academy. She has been chair of Campus Faculty in 2007-2008 and chair of Faculty Senate in 2008-2009. Co-author of over 50 publications, Fort has received outstanding research awards from the College of Education and Health Professions and from the Southern Academy of Women in Physical Activity, Sport and Health. She also received the College of Education and Health Professions' award for outstanding service and her teaching skills have been recognized multiple years by colleagues in her department.

Jeannie Whayne

Jeannie Whayne is professor of history in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. Whayne began her career at the University of Arkansas in 1990 after completing her doctoral degree at the University of California, San Diego in 1989.

A former chair of the department of history (1998-2008), she is past president of the Campus Faculty and Faculty Senate and is currently president of the Teaching Academy. She won the 2011 John E. King Award for service to Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. She teaches classes on American History, Southern History, Arkansas History and Agricultural/Environmental History and is a winner of the college’s Master Teacher Award.

Her research area is in Arkansas and Southern history, particularly the history of agriculture and race relations. Whayne has won numerous awards for her publications, including the John G. Ragsdale prize for Delta Empire: Lee Wilson and the Transformation of Agriculture in the New South (Louisiana State University Press, 2011), the Ledbetter Prize for Arkansas Delta: A Land of Paradox (University of Arkansas Press, 1993), and the Arkansiana Award for A New Plantation South: Land, Labor and Federal Favor in Twentieth Century Arkansas (University of Virginia Press, 1996). A former fellow with the Smithsonian Institution and the Carter G. Woodson Institute, she is a distinguished lecturer with the Organization of American Historians, and she is vice-president and president-elect of the Agricultural History Society which named her a Fellow of the Society in 2010.

Paul Cronan

Paul Cronan is a professor of information systems and holder of the M.D. Matthews Chair of Information Systems. Cronan received the D.B.A. from Louisiana Tech University in 1979. From 1993-1995, he was co-director and co-founder of the University of Arkansas Teaching and Faculty Support Center. He rejoined the center as a co-director in 2011.

He has received the university's Distinguished Alumni Award for Teaching and is a charter member of the University of Arkansas Teaching Academy. Cronan was recognized as the 1995 Computer Educator of the Year by the International Association for Computer Information Systems. He is interested in the use of mentoring for the improvement of teaching. Current projects include the promotion and improvement of academic integrity at the university, the development of teaching methods using appropriate technology to support learning, and the development of graduate teaching assistants.

He is currently director of the Master of Information Systems degree program and has served as vice chair of the department. He currently serves as vice president of the Decision Sciences Institute (and Board of Directors) and has served as associate editor for MIS Quarterly. His research interests include enterprise resource planning and simulation, information systems ethical behavior, performance analysis and effectiveness, and end-user computing. Publications have appeared in MIS Quarterly, Decision Sciences, Journal of Business Ethics, Information and Management, OMEGA The International Journal of Management Science, The Journal of Management Information Systems, Communications of the ACM, Journal of Organizational and End User Computing, Database, Journal of Research on Computing in Education, Journal of Financial Research, as well as in other journals and proceedings of various conferences.