Congratulations to the 2025-2026 Chancellor’s Leadership Fellows: Brown, Çakmak, Flaherty, and Moscarella

The Office of Faculty Development is pleased to announce the 2025-26 Chancellor’s Leadership Fellows. 

• William D. Brown, Jr., Senior Associate Dean and Clinical Professor of Accounting 

• Gülru Çakmak, Associate Professor of the History of Art and Architecture 

• Patrick Flaherty, Associate Professor of Mathematics and Statistics 

• Rosa Moscarella, Senior Lecturer of Biology 

“This year’s cohort of Chancellor’s Leadership Fellows will address the institution’s financial adaptability, undergraduate experiential learning opportunities, AI leadership in higher education, and professional pathways for humanities students. We are proud to offer these leadership opportunities for our faculty to bring their unique excellence to advance UMass Amherst’s mission, and I look forward to collaborating with each of these fellows,” said Fouad Abd-El-Khalick, provost and senior vice chancellor for academic affairs. 

The Chancellor’s Leadership Fellowship (CLF) program seeks to cultivate future campus leaders by offering a half-time, one-year temporary appointment to an administrative area on campus and providing mentoring from the leader of the host unit. In addition, fellows are expected to launch a significant program or complete a significant project during their fellowship year.  

The CLF nomination and application process commences annually in December. More information about the CLF and a list of past fellows by year can be found on OFD’s website. 

2025-26 Chancellor’s Leadership Fellows: 

William D. Brown, Jr., Senior Associate Dean and Clinical Professor of Accounting, will explore innovative financial models and cross-institutional partnerships that can enhance the university’s long-term fiscal health and adaptability in response to demographic shifts in higher education. Specifically, Brown will focus on a strategic initiative focused on revenue diversification, leveraging public-private partnerships, alternative funding streams, and data-driven resource allocation and forecasting models to optimize financial planning. Brown will be working with Deb Gould, Vice Provost for Administration and Finance, and Andrew Mangels, Vice Chancellor for Administration and Finance. 

Brown's past research has focused broadly on how market participants weigh different types of information in price formation in asset markets. For the past 12 years, Brown has served in various academic leadership positions working to improve the student experience and increase available resources for faculty research.  

Brown shares, “the higher-education landscape is rapidly changing. While none of us has a crystal ball, I want to help develop strategies to make UMass Amherst resilient to threats that may emerge, and nimble enough to quickly adapt to change and take advantage of new opportunities. I’m looking forward to working closely with Vice Chancellor Mangels and Vice Provost Gould on this project.”  

Gülru Çakmak, Associate Professor of the History of Art and Architecture, will focus on launching a Professional Pathways in the Humanities program at Mount Ida. The program, “Humanities at Work,” will be a semester-long immersive experience for undergraduates that combines academic coursework with structured internships in museums and cultural institutions throughout Greater Boston. This initiative aims to prepare undergraduate students for careers in the cultural sector by fostering experiential learning, faculty mentorship, and strong community partnerships, positioning Mount Ida as a regional hub for humanities-based professional development. Çakmak will be working with Christina Metevier, Associate Provost of Academic Programs at the Mount Ida Campus. 

Çakmak specializes in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European and Ottoman art, with a PhD from Johns Hopkins University, and does extensive research on historical and modern visual culture, including the book Jean-Léon Gérôme and the Crisis of History Painting in the 1850s. Her scholarly work spans diverse areas, from modern European sculpture and its material processes to Ottoman painting and historical representation, reflecting a broad engagement with different cultures, media, and artistic practices. Çakmak is the chief editor of the open-access digital French studies journal H-France Salon.  

Çakmak shares, "I look forward to cultivating meaningful partnerships with cultural institutions in and around Boston, and mentoring students as they gain hands-on experience, helping to build a vibrant pipeline of future leaders in the humanities who can innovate and thrive in diverse professional environments.” 

Patrick Flaherty, Associate Professor of Mathematics and Statistics, will be supporting the development of fair and equitable strategies that position UMass to be a leader in AI-enabled higher education. Flaherty will be working with Tom Bernardin, Executive Director of the Center for Data Science, Terry Carroll, Executive Finance Officer and Chief Operations Officer for Information Technology, and Chris Misra, Vice Chancellor for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer.