Associate Vice Chancellor
for Diversity and Climate
Professor of Physics
University of Wisconsin-Madison
| Bernice Durand Associate Vice Chancellor for Diversity and Climate Professor of Physics University of Wisconsin-Madison |
|
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
As Associate Vice Chancellor for Diversity & Climate, Professor Durand provides leadership to ensure that faculty, staff and student diversity issues including race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual preference, and classroom and general campus climate issues are addressed. Currently, she is co-directing a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan foundation to the UW System designed to create more equity, flexibility and career options for faculty and academic staff. She is also a member of the leadership team of the Women in Science and Engineering Leadership Institute sponsored by the National Science Foundation to increase the participation and status of women in science.
Professor Durand has played an active role in shared governance at UW-Madison, leading the most recent chancellor search and chairing many other important committees including the University Committee, the Athletic Board, the Diversity Plan 2008 development and oversight committees, the Library Committee, and the Letters & Science Curriculum Committee, leading the development and implementation of the university's ethnic studies requirement.
In 2002, she was awarded a special Chancellor's Recognition Award for Outstanding Leadership in Campus Diversity and received the 2002 Faculty and Staff Recognition Award from the Wisconsin Alumni Association's Cabinet 99.
Professor Durand (B.S. and Ph.D. Iowa State) is a theoretical physicist who specializes in particle theory and mathematical physics. Her research has been in symmetry relations in algebra and physics, plus the phenomenology of high-energy interactions at large particle accelerators.
A recipient of the Chancellor's Award for Outstanding Teaching, Professor Durand has taught courses at all levels from modern physics for nonscientists to a specialized course she developed for advanced graduate students in the use of topology and algebra in quantum field theory. She has used technological and pedagogical techniques in her teaching such as having her nonscientists course shown on public television with the course work web based. She enjoys giving talks on physics to service organizations, high school students, and the general public.