Presidential Professors
Presidential Professorships are honorary positions that recognize members of the Bucknell faculty for outstanding achievement in all three areas of University life: teaching, scholarship and service. Professorships are awarded annually to two faculty members for a three-year term, so that six faculty members hold the title of Presidential Professor in any given year. Recipients receive additional funding to support teaching, research and scholarship as well as a paid one-semester leave.
Selection of Presidential Professors is based on a sustained record of distinguished teaching and scholarship as well as significant service to the University and the profession. To qualify for selection, eligible faculty must have served at least four years at the rank of full professor and demonstrate outstanding teaching and scholarship via a nomination letter from a senior faculty member familiar with their work and a summary of their retention, promotion or post-tenure review processes provided by their college's dean.
Eligible faculty members are invited to apply annually in the fall semester.
2025-28 Presidential Professors
Matt Bailey joined what was then the Department of Management in 2007. Over the years, he contributed to the establishment of the Freeman College of Management in 2017 and, in 2019, the Department of Analytics & Operations Management, along with a new major in business analytics. Through Bailey's hands-on approach, students develop problem-solving skills by working on projects that combine academic credit with client engagement. His scholarship, which focuses on decision-support systems, also addresses real-world challenges, including analytics research with Geisinger Health System. In 2018, Bailey co-coordinated an interdisciplinary Faculty Learning Community on Data Science and Analytics, whose work led to a successful proposal for the MacArthur Professorship in Data Science and laid the foundation for the Dominguez Center for Data Science, for which he has served as faculty fellow since 2023. He will use his Presidential Professorship funding and leave to pursue research in analytics for school redistricting and the ROI of container shipping optimization.
Anjalee Deshpande Hutchinson joined Bucknell in 2008 and is the current and former (2014-20) chair of the Department of Theatre & Dance. She is also the co-director of theatre, the senior faculty fellow in the office of the vice president for equity & inclusive excellence, and the former interim associate provost for equity & inclusive excellence. Notably, Hutchinson is committed to revising course content and assignments annually to stay relevant in the evolving field of performance. She received Bucknell’s 2019 Award for Teaching Excellence and 2022 President’s Diversity & Inclusion Award, and she is also the recipient of the National Alliance of Acting Teachers’ 2025 Acting Teacher of Excellence Award, among other honors. In addition to directing on-campus productions, Hutchinson's scholarship includes the direction of two plays that were performed at prestigious theatres in 2020 and 2022; and she is the author of books and invited essays in two anthologies. With her Presidential Professorship funding, Hutchinson will take a group of students and colleagues on a 19-day trip to India, where they will participate in a residential workshop and perform research that will be used to create a mainstage production at Bucknell. A writing project about this experience will be the focus of her award leave time.