Steering Committee
Erika Offerdahl
Director of ADVANCE
Professor of Biochemistry
Dr. Erika Offerdahl, Director of ADVANCE at WSU, oversees all the ADVANCE at WSU activities, coordinating events and trainings, as well as programs (i.e., the External Mentor, Transitions, and Leadership opportunities). Erika meets monthly with the Departmental Liaisons, and every semester with the ADVANCE at WSU Steering Committee. She provides oversight for program development and faculty-friendly initiatives and informs academic units regarding ADVANCE at WSU activities. Dr. Offerdahl’s mission is to expand upon the excellent faculty support programs already in existence at WSU and to build collaborative relationships across the system.
Kim Christen
Vice President for Research
Dr. Kim Christen currently oversees the Office of Research’s advancement efforts in her capacity as WSU Vice President for Research. Dr. Christen is the founder of Mukurtu CMS an open-source software platform designed with Indigenous communities globally to meet their unique information, curatorial, and data needs. She is a co-founder and former co-director of Local Contexts, a global initiative to provide digital tools and legal frameworks for stewarding digital cultural heritage and the management of intellectual property by Indigenous communities. Her research and scholarship explore the intersections data management, software systems, and information ethics specifically addressing issues of access, use and reuse of cultural heritage and traditional knowledge in global network. Her work has been published widely in international journals. Dr. Christen collaborates broadly emphasizing community-engaged research including working closely with Native American nations across Washington state and nationally as well as with Indigenous communities globally to build digital tools and networks as catalysts for social change.
Douglas Call
Regents Professor and Senior Vice Provost, Washington State University
Dr. Doug Call is a Regents Professor of molecular epidemiology in the Paul G. Allen School for Global Health (2012-present). He received his B.S. degree from WSU (wildlife management, 1987), his M.S. from Humboldt State University (wildlife management, 1990) and his PhD from WSU (zoology, 1997). After three years of postdoctoral training (Univ. of Michigan and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory), he initiated an antimicrobial-resistance research program in the Department of Veterinary Microbiology and Pathology (2000) and became a Fellow with the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2014 in recognition for his contributions to food and water safety, particularly through molecular epidemiology of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in agricultural systems. He has trained 20 graduate students and published over 250 peer-reviewed papers with past and ongoing antimicrobial-resistance research within communities and hospitals in Tanzania, Kenya, and Guatemala with support from the CDC, NIH, NSF, and Wellcome Trust. In 2021 he received the Washington State University Sahlin Eminent Faculty Award in recognition of his scholarship and professional service. He currently serves as the secretary for the Board of Directors of the Washington State Academy of Sciences, as the director of the WSU-NIH T32 Protein Biotechnology Training Program, and as the Senior Vice Provost for Washington State University.
Debbie Compeau
Dean, Carson College of Business
Dr. Debbie Compeau was appointed interim dean of Washington State University’s Carson College of Business on July 1, 2023. She leads the college in its endeavor to be the model school of business for tomorrow’s land grant university. Compeau is dedicated to continue elevating the college as the first choice for business education in the Pacific Northwest. She strives to implement active learning methods, especially case-based learning, as one of the college’s points of distinction.
Prior to her appointment, Compeau was the college’s senior associate dean for faculty affairs and research. She is passionate about building the college’s reputation as a regular contributor of rigorous and influential research to academic disciplines and being recognized as the leading source of research insights and critical thinking about business.
Compeau’s own research seeks to understand and address complex issues related to the adoption, implementation, and use of information technologies in organizations, particularly health care organizations. She has taught information systems at the undergraduate, masters, and doctoral levels, with a particular focus on IT strategy. She is an active case writer and case teacher and has conducted workshops on teaching with cases in the US, Canada, France, and Germany.
Compeau holds the Hubman Distinguished Professorship of Information Systems and is a Fellow of the Association for Information Systems. Prior to joining WSU, she held faculty positions in Canada at Western University (2000-2015), the University of Calgary (1998-2000), and Carleton University (1991-1998). She earned her doctorate in information systems from the Ivey Business School (Western University).
Compeau grew up in Canada and met her husband, Joe Compeau, at college. Joe is a professor in the Carson College’s Department of Management, Information Systems, and Entrepreneurship. They moved to the Palouse in 2015 to join WSU.
Catherine (Katie) Cooper
Associate Dean for Faculty, College of Art & Sciences
Dr. Catherine Cooper is a specialist in geodynamics, geophysics, and earth sciences, an associate professor in the School of the Environment, and has long been involved in leadership roles at the school, college, and University level. In her role as the Associate Dean for Faculty in the College of Arts & Sciences (CAS), Katie supports the recruitment, retention, and development of CAS faculty. She also often partners with the Provost’s Office on differing faculty-centric programs including the COACHE faculty work-life initiative and two Association of Public and Land-grant University sponsored projected focused on faculty retention. She’s also served in the past as a member of the CAS Executive Advisory Committee, chair of the University’s Salary Equity Task Force, Provost’s Liaison for the Association for Faculty Women, and an executive board member and past chair of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women.
Nancy Deringer
Associate Dean of Student Success and Academic Programs, CAHNRS
Dr. Nancy Deringer is the Associate Dean of Student Success and Academic Programs in the College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resources Sciences (CAHNRS) at WSU. In this leadership role, she advances initiatives that strengthen student engagement, retention, and academic excellence across the college’s diverse programs. Dr. Deringer is an Associate Professor and Principal Investigator (PI) on many USDA NIFA grants focused on STEM agricultural pathways and workforce development. She has acquired over $30M in grants and contracts from foundation, state, and federal sources. Dr. Deringer was the State Director for the Washington 4-H Youth Development Program from 2018-2022. Prior to WSU roles, she was a tenured faculty member in the University of Idaho’s School of Family and Consumer Sciences for ten years; a national USDA-NIFA CYFAR Coach; and the statewide evaluator for the USDA NIFA’s CYFAR grantees. Dr. Deringer was Associate Director for the UI Center on Disabilities and Human Development (CDHD), a University Center on Excellence for Developmental Disabilities (UCEDD). Dr. Deringer’s scholarly work and outreach are centered on the development of innovative educational pathways that foster college and career readiness. Her current research agenda examines the impacts of financial stress on student retention and persistence, providing actionable insights that inform institutional policy and student success strategies across higher education.
Lisa Guerrero
Vice Provost for Access and Opportunity
Dr. Lisa Guerrero is is the Vice Provost for Access and Opportunity. She has been an active advocate for equity, access, inclusion, and justice in education since joining the WSU faculty in 2004, and is a professor of Comparative Ethnic Studies in WSU’s School of Languages, Cultures, and Race. She provides leadership based in access and opportunity by helping to identify and develop best practices and evidence-based approaches towards building access, equity and inclusion in various areas including: faculty and staff recruitment and retention, teaching and mentoring, curriculum planning, and critical pedagogy. Her scholarly research focuses on race in literature and in the media, and social justice history and theory. She earned her Ph.D. in Literature from UC Santa Cruz and her BA in Black Studies and English from UC Santa Barbara.
Lynne Nelson
Associate Dean of Faculty Programs & Teaching, College of Veterinary Medicine
Dr. Lynne Nelson is the veterinary hospital’s lead cardiologist, directs the Cardiology Service, and is board certified in internal medicine and cardiology. Dr. Nelson studies acquired systemic hypertension and underlying mechanisms of heart failure by comparing heart disease in multiple species such as dogs, cats, bears and ground squirrels. She works with zoos and nonprofit organizations around the world assessing heart disease in wildlife. Dedicated to the importance of teaching in the veterinary profession, she is an active member in the college’s Teaching Academy and the Teaching Academy of the Consortium of West Region Colleges of Veterinary Medicine. She has also served on the academic council to the Dean, and serves as an Associate Chair of Veterinary Medical Education for clinical programs.
Partha Pratim Pande
Interim Dean and Professor and Boeing Centennial Chair in Computer Engineering
Dr. Partha Pratim Pande is a professor and holder of the Boeing Centennial Chair in computer engineering at the school of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Washington State University, Pullman, USA. He is currently the Interim Dean of the Voiland college of Engineering and Architecture. His current research interests are novel interconnect architectures for manycore chips, on-chip wireless communication networks, heterogeneous architectures, and ML for EDA. Dr. Pande currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief (EIC) of IEEE Design and Test (D&T). He is on the editorial boards of IEEE Transactions on VLSI (TVLSI) and ACM Journal of Emerging Technologies in Computing Systems (JETC) and IEEE Embedded Systems letters. He was the technical program committee chair of IEEE/ACM Network-on-Chip Symposium 2015 and CASES (2019-2020). He also serves on the program committees of many reputed international conferences. He has won the NSF CAREER award in 2009. He is the winner of the Anjan Bose outstanding researcher award from the college of engineering, Washington State University in 2013. He is a fellow of IEEE.
In Memoriam: Kelly Ward
Vice Provost for Faculty Development and Recognition
Kelly Ward was the Vice Provost for Faculty Development and Recognition and Professor of Higher Education. She previously served as chair of the Department of Educational Leadership, Sport Studies, and Educational/Counseling Psychology. Her administrative roles provided the opportunity for Dr. Ward to connect her research expertise to current problems of practice. At WSU, she had taught Administration of Higher Education, Critical Issues in Higher Education and Student Affairs, Student Services, Seminar in Higher Education, and College Teaching. She previously taught at Oklahoma State University and worked as an administrator and faculty member at the University of Montana. Dr. Ward’s input as a steering committee member was invaluable, the ADVANCE at WSU team will continue to focus on university issues that Kelly deemed important.
ADVANCE at WSU Lighty Building, Room 190F P.O. Box 641061 Pullman, WA 99164-1061
