The Faculty Senate Executive Committee (FSEC) provides leadership for the Senate. The Senate Executive Committee is composed of:
- Four officers (Chair, Chair-Elect, Past-Chair and Associate Chair)
- Seven Standing Committee Chairs (Curriculum; Research; Faculty Development; Diversity, Equity & Inclusion; Finance; Governance & Operations; Policies & Procedures)
- Two Senators-at-Large
- Chair of the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee (ex-officio)
- Chair of the Graduate Curriculum Committee (ex-officio)
- Senate Parliamentarian (ex-officio)
The Senate Executive Committee can make representation in its own name about any matter within the scope of the Senate's responsibilities and functions when, in the committee’s judgment, circumstances require action before it is possible to convene a meeting of the Senate. In such instances, the committee will be guided by its best judgment regarding the intention of the Senate.
The Senate Executive Committee serves in an advisory role to Senate standing committees. Senate standing committees should make reports to the Chair of the Senate at least two days prior to the next meeting of the Senate Executive Committee.
The FSEC also meets once a month with the UAB President and Provost to discuss the needs and responsibilities of the faculty and to provide advice to the President and Provost.
Chair of Faculty Senate
Eric Ford, Ph.D. MPH
(Ph.D. – UAB; MPH – South Carolina; BS – Cornell School of Hotel Administration) Since 2017, Eric has been a Professor in the School of Public Health with a joint appointment in the Collat School of Business. Prior to that, he served as the Associate Chair and MHA Program Director in the Health Policy and Management Department in the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. Earlier positions include serving as the Forsyth Medical Center Distinguished Professor of Healthcare at the University of North Carolina Greensboro’s Bryan School of Business. Strategic management, health information technologies, value-based programs, service integration and their combined effects on performance (both financial and population health related) are Eric’s primary areas of research. In particular, he has focused on making the link between Personal Health Record (PHR) use and its impact on care coordination. Eric is the current editor of the Journal of Healthcare Management. He has served as the Academy of Management’s Healthcare Management Division’s Chair and on the board of the Association of University Programs in Health Administration (AUPHA). With his research colleagues, Eric has won numerous publication awards including two Best Theory to Practice Paper recognitions. In addition, he won the 2014 Health Care Management Division’s Teaching Award as part of the Academy of Management.
View Karen Cropsey's full faculty bio-sketch.
Chair-Elect of Faculty Senate
Dan Givan, D.M.D.
Dr. Daniel Givan is a Professor of Restorative Sciences at the University of Alabama School of Dentistry and serves as Associate Chair for the Department, Division Head of Prosthodontics, and as the Director of Digital Dentistry and Clinical Laboratory Services. He is actively involved in clinical prosthodontics and has lectured nationally and internationally with an emphasis in occlusion, implantology, and digital dentistry. Dr. Givan received his dental degree from the University of Mississippi in 1992 and afterward completed a general practice residency and a specialty residency in Prosthodontics. He is a Diplomate of the American Board of Prosthodontics and has earned a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering with an emphasis on dental materials. He is actively involved in both clinical research and applications of technology to dentistry. Dr. Givan maintains an active faculty practice limited to prosthodontics and is a member of numerous professional organizations including International Association for Dental Research, the American College of Prosthodontists, Academy of Osseointegration, and the American Dental Association.
View Dan Givan's full faculty bio-sketch.
Past-Chair of Faculty Senate
Karen Cropsey, Psy.D.
Dr. Cropsey attended undergraduate and her masters degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She attended Indiana State University in Terre Haute, Indiana for her doctoral training and completed internship in Clinical Psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. She completed postdoctoral fellowships in forensics and substance abuse at University of Mississippi Medical Center and Virginia Commonwealth University. She stayed on as faculty in the Department of Psychiatry at Virginia Commonwealth University after completing her fellowship training. She joined the faculty at University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2007 as an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry. She is the Conatser Turner Endowed Professor of Psychiatry.
View Karen Cropsey's full faculty bio-sketch.
Associate Chair of Faculty Senate
Girish Melkani, Ph.D.
Dr. Melkani acquired a Ph.D. degree from Central Drug Research Institute, Lucknow, India (A CSIR premier Drug Institute) & Kumaun University, Nainital, India. For his Ph.D. dissertation, he studied lipoproteins under oxidative stress (in vitro and in vivo) and their cardiovascular implication in humans. After acquiring his Ph.D., he became interested in naturally occurring defense mechanisms involving heat shock proteins, which play a critical role in maintaining protein structure and function during cellular processes and stresses. He drew from his background in oxidative stress in lipoproteins for his postdoctoral position (at the Cal State San Marcos, CA) which focused on how GroEL (heat shock protein HSP-60 analog of E. coli) performs its chaperone function under multiple stress conditions. At the San Diego State University, he then went on to further study the role of chaperones in vivo, particularly in the regulation of cardiac and skeletal muscle as well as in protein folding diseases. For these purposes, he used Drosophila as a model system using genetics, molecular biology, cell biology, cardiac physiology, and gene transfer techniques.
View Girish Melkani's full faculty bio-sketch.
Parliamentarian of Faculty Senate
Mike Wyss, Ph.D.
J. Michael Wyss, Ph.D., is a Professor in the department of Cell Biology, Medicine, Neurobiology, and Psychology and the Director of the Center for Community Outreach Development (CORD). He received a Ph.D. in neurobiology from Washington University in St. Louis in 1976. During his postdoctoral studies at Washington University School of Medicine, he applied cell biological methods to elucidate the role of the limbic cortex in behavior and autonomic control and has continued to expand this research at Birmingham (1979-present). Other studies are testing the mechanisms by which a decrease in norepinephrine release in the anterior hypothalamic nucleus leads to of salt-sensitive hypertension.
As Director of CORD, he leads many of UAB's K-12 research and outreach programs to area K-12 students. He is Chair of the UAB Conflict of Interest Review Board. Dr. Wyss has served as Chair of the UAB Faculty Senate in 2017-2018 and has served on the Faculty Policies and Procedures Committee since 2011.
Chair of Faculty Policies and Procedures Committee (FPPC)
Dan Givan, D.M.D.
Dr. Daniel Givan is a Professor of Restorative Sciences at the University of Alabama School of Dentistry and serves as Associate Chair for the Department, Division Head of Prosthodontics, and as the Director of Digital Dentistry and Clinical Laboratory Services. He is actively involved in clinical prosthodontics and has lectured nationally and internationally with an emphasis in occlusion, implantology, and digital dentistry. Dr. Givan received his dental degree from the University of Mississippi in 1992 and afterward completed a general practice residency and a specialty residency in Prosthodontics. He is a Diplomate of the American Board of Prosthodontics and has earned a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering with an emphasis on dental materials. He is actively involved in both clinical research and applications of technology to dentistry. Dr. Givan maintains an active faculty practice limited to prosthodontics and is a member of numerous professional organizations including International Association for Dental Research, the American College of Prosthodontists, Academy of Osseointegration, and the American Dental Association.
Dr. Givan has served multiple terms on the Faculty Senate numerous time and has actively served on the FPPC since 2013.
Chair of Curriculum Committee
Sarah Culver, Ph.D.
Dr. Sarah Culver is an associate professor of economics in the UAB Collat School of Business. She earned her Ph.D. in 1993 at the University of Houston under dissertation advisor Dr. David H. Pappell.
View Sarah Culver's full faculty bio-sketch.
Chair of Research Committee
Natalie Gassman, Ph.D.
Dr. Natalie R. Gassman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology at UAB. She completed her doctoral degree in Chemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles. Subsequently, Natalie conducted postdoctoral research at Wake Forest University and then at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Natalie uses fluorescent technologies and microscopy to address DNA damage induction and DNA repair from environmental exposures. Her goal is to understand the modulation of DNA repair pathways from environmental exposures and how changes in these pathways support transformation, carcinogenesis, and therapeutic resistance.
Outside of her research at UAB, Natalie is active in the Environmental Mutagenesis and Genomics Society. She is a co-chair for membership and professional development, where she helps develop programs and leadership opportunities for students, postdoctoral fellows, and early career scientists. She also serves as the co-lead for the UAB CCTS Case Studies in Mentoring program, helping individuals at all levels address mentoring challenges.
Natalie was elected to the UAB Faculty Senate in 2021 and serves on the Senate Research Committee.
View Natalie Gassman's full faculty bio-sketch.
Chair of Finance Committee
Peter Jones, Ph.D.
Peter Jones, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Broadly, his research focuses on the public budgeting processes and financial management of local and state governments. He also studies K-12 public schools and considers the financial ramifications of various education policy issues. Dr. Jones primarily teaches in UAB’s Master of Public Administration program, training the region's future public and nonprofit sector leaders. He offers graduate classes on the public budgeting and financial management, quantitative methods, and data management, and he teaches an undergraduate course on public service. He received the 2021 College of Arts and Sciences Dean's Awards for Excellence in Teaching and was the first UAB faculty member awarded the Center for Teaching and Learning Platinum Certificate.
Dr. Jones co-leads the Alabama Chapter for Scholars Strategy Network (SSN), a nonpartisan, national organization of university-based scholars who are committed to using research to improve policy and strengthen democracy. He is also a member of the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama Roundtable and served on the Alabama State Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights.
Chair of Faculty Development Committee
Ken Gunnells, Ph.D.
Instructor Management, Information Systems and Quantitative Methods
View Ken Gunnells' full faculty bio-sketch.
Chair of the Faculty Senate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee (FS-DEIC)
Merida Grant, Ph.D.
Dr. Merida Grant is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurobiology in the School of Medicine and holds a Secondary appointment as Assistant Professor in Biomedical Engineering. Dr. Grant obtained her PhD from Duke University in Clinical Psychology in 1997 and completed her post-doctoral work in clinical neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic in Pittsburgh, PA in 2000. Dr. Grant is the founding Director of the Trauma Related Disorders Clinic in the department of Psychiatry, a training clinic focused on providing evidenced based care to adults with psychiatric disorders that are the sequelae of early life and adult onset traumas. She also currently serves as the Chair of the Alabama Board of Examiners in Psychology Professional Wellness & Monitoring Committee, established to identify, assist and monitor impaired Alabama psychologists. Dr. Grant's research interests since her graduate training have addressed the long term effects of stress on brain and behavior. This work has primarily focused on the effect of early life stressors, including childhood trauma, on alterations in brain morphology, physiology and connectivty. Dr. Grant is also a member of numerous professional organizations, including the International Society for Traumstic Stress Studies and Trauma Psychology. Outside of these sctivities, Dr. Grant has Chaired the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committee in the Department of Psychiatry since 2020 with a focus on improvements in recruitment, retention and promotion of a diverse faculty.
Chair of Governance and Operations Committee
Michael Herr II, Ph.D.
Associate Professor; Cell, Developmental and Integrative Biology (CDIB
View Michael Herr II's full faculty bio-sketch.
Chair of the Graduate Curriculum Committee
Ragib Hasan, Ph.D.
Chair of the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee
Cristin Gavin, Ph.D.
2024-2025 Senator-at-Large
Mamie Coats, Ph.D.
Dr. Mamie T. Coats obtained her B.S. degree in Biochemistry from Xavier University of Louisiana, New Orleans, Louisiana. She obtained a Ph.D. in Microbiology for the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama. She remained at UAB for her post-doctoral studies. Dr. Coats’ research focuses on pneumococcal biofilms and animal models of pneumococcal disease relevant to children.
View Ken Gunnells' full faculty bio-sketch.
2024-2025 Senator-at-Large
Maria Hopkins
A native of Stockholm, Sweden, Professor Hopkins studies social and emotional development in children. She also serves as the Director of Undergraduate Studies in Psychology at UAB. Dr. Hopkins teaches courses in developmental psychology, social development, research methods and the Psychology Capstone. She is the faculty advisor for the UAB Chapter of Psi Chi, the Psychology Honor Society, which aims to get psychology students connected on campus and in the community.
View Ken Gunnells' full faculty bio-sketch.