
Chair of the University Academic Senate: Dr. Elaine Spiller, Professor of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences
Dr. Elaine Spiller is chair of the University Academic Senate (UAS) and Clare Boothe Luce (CBL) Professor of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences. In addition to UAS, she has served Marquette as a member of the Marquette Core Curriculum Implementation Committee, a member of the Sabbatical Review Committee, and through her CBL work as Special Advisor to the Provost’s Office of Faculty Affairs.
She believes that Marquette is so special because of its people — the students, faculty and staff ARE Marquette. She is committed to shared governance as a mechanism to strengthen Marquette and maintain its niche as a place where students learn from and work with world class teacher-scholars who care deeply about them as people. She believes that transparency in both communication and processes is critical to effective shared governance.
Spiller received her bachelor’s degree in Applied Math from the University of Colorado, and her MS and Ph.D. in Applied Math from Northwestern University. She spent a year as a visiting professor at the University at Buffalo, followed by two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute and Duke University. She joined Marquette’s faculty in 2008. Her research has been continuously funded as PI or co-PI by 14 awards from the NSF, ONR, FEMA, and NERC. She was awarded Marquette’s Way Klingler Sabbatical Fellowship and Way Klingler Fellowship in 2018 and 2022, respectively. Her research is at the interface of applied math and statistics in a field called uncertainty quantification. Methodology developed by Spiller has led to innovations in probabilistic hazard assessment and forecasting for volcanic and debris flow hazards. She teaches courses from first semester calculus to graduate-level simulation methods.