Dr. Mary Prorok, Assistant Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, has been selected to receive a 2016 Presidential Leadership Award. This award, conferred by the University of Notre Dame, is given to recognize staff supervisors who demonstrate outstanding servant leadership.
Dr. Prorok started her career at Notre Dame in 1994 in the laboratory of Professor Frank Castellino, later becoming a research professor in the W.M. Keck Center for Transgene Research. In 2010 she accepted the position as Assistant Chair, initially taking on the responsibility of overseeing the reorganization of the departmental staff. Over the next few years, Dr. Prorok successfully restructured the team to be highly responsive and effective. She has nurtured a very collegial and positive environment that allows each staff member to excel at his or her work in a warm and welcoming setting. These efforts culminated in the departmental staff receiving the 2013 Presidential Team Irish Award for demonstrating the University’s core values of integrity, accountability, teamwork, leadership in mission, and leadership in excellence.
Dr. Prorok’s contributions to the department are tremendous, including organizing multidisciplinary and multi-investigator grant applications, leading the efforts to meet the highest laboratory safety standards, spearheading the department’s efforts toward increased diversity, and leading and supervising the departmental staff. Dr. Prorok also leads Project SEED, a program to provide economically disadvantaged high school students opportunities for summer research. She truly makes the department better, more efficient, and safer.
We congratulate Dr. Prorok on this well-deserved honor!