Member of the Committee on Nominations, Representing the North Central Region
Christopher Fasano
Christopher Fasano was elected in the 2014 elections and began a three-year term on December 9, 2014.
Present Position:
Professor of Physics, Department of Physics, Monmouth College
Chapter Affiliation:
Knox College
Candidate's Statement:
I am interested in serving in Sigma Xi to help faculty and students involved in the sciences at baccalaureate colleges. Baccalaureate Colleges play an important role in the education of future scientists. Since our focus is on undergraduates, we offer a unique scientific education that can be tailored to the needs of our students. This education can be broad, cross-disciplinary, and interdisciplinary in nature, both in the sciences and beyond the sciences to include the humanities and the arts. Because our focus is on undergraduates, we can have a special impact on students from underrepresented groups as we can help them overcome the particular challenges they might face.
Sigma Xi can help foster both scholarly activity and research as pedagogy at baccalaureate colleges. It can do this in many ways and I am interested in developing new efforts and in supporting existing efforts. What are examples of challenges that baccalaureate colleges face and how might Sigma Xi help? Science departments can be quite small at baccalaureate colleges—leading to a sense of isolation for faculty members at those institutions. This isolation can even spread to the students in those programs. Sigma Xi can play a role in mitigating that isolation. Funding and time may be short for scholarly activities at baccalaureate colleges and Sigma Xi might help address these challenges by connecting us together to share ideas, resources, and experiences. One could imagine sharing experiences with limited time and resources, helping review and improve each other’s grant proposals and many other things. Sigma Xi can connect us together to do great things, and I’m excited by the possibilities that I can imagine.
To do these things, we need diverse representation at Sigma Xi. As a member of the Committee on Nominations, I will work hard to see that we have a set of candidates for our elections that represent many different kinds of members.
Christopher Fasano's CV.