Jana Houser is our newest Martha L. Corry Faculty Fellow! Congratulations Jana on this prestigious appointment! The award provides $10,000 of funding annually for five years which can be used on research and teaching. Jana’s award window will be 2024-2025 through 2029-2030. Our most recent awardees were Bryan Mark and Ed Malecki. 

Dr. Martha Corry (1919-2015) was born in Springfield, Ohio. She completed her high school education at Springfield High School before enrolling at Ohio State University where she earned a B.A. in Liberal Arts and a B.S. in Education. Due to her outstanding academic achievements, she was inducted as a lifetime member into Phi Beta Kappa. After World War II, Dr. Corry joined the graduate program at the University of Iowa, where she obtained both her M.A. and Ph.D. in Geography. Her doctoral dissertation was on the physical landscape of the Siberian Far East. She then served as a professor and as the first chairperson of the Department of Geography at SUNY Oneonta. As a faculty member, she traveled, during the early Cold War years, on research trips to the Soviet Union as well as India.

Dr. Corry endowed faculty scholarships in her name at both SUNY Oneonta and Ohio State. We are very thankful for the support she has provided our faculty. The award at Ohio State is to go to a colleague of “high professional profile” and used to “make a significant difference in the professional development of the faculty fellow … and in the visibility of the department”. 

 Jana is wrapping up her second academic year at Ohio State and has already made a profound and lasting impact on the department. She won a $1.75 million Good-to-Great for a radar truck and is working with colleagues in the College of Engineering to make that a reality! She has built a new storm chasing class, speeded along a series of new GE classes as our new Director of Undergraduate Studies, and engaged in a thorough revision of our Atmospheric Science major along with her ASP colleagues. All while advising students and doing research! We are very fortunate to have Jana in the department.

Thank you to the nominating committee, headed up by Kendra McSweeney and consisting of Bryan Mark and Zhengyu Liu.