Linda J. Pike, Ph.D., associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics in the School of Medicine, has been elected chair of the Faculty Senate and the Faculty Senate Council for the 2004-05 academic year.
Administrative records indicate that Pike is the first woman to hold this position at Washington University.
The Faculty Senate Council comprises 15 representatives from the University’s eight schools. The council serves as a liaison between the administration and the faculty on a broad range of issues involving virtually all aspects of campus life.
The Faculty Senate comprises all University faculty members.
“I’m very honored to be elected to this position,” Pike said. “I look forward to meeting and working with new colleagues from the administration and the other schools at the University, and to learning how the issues differ on the Hilltop Campus and the Medical Campus.”
As chair, Pike represents the faculty on the University Council and the University Management Team. In addition, Pike and the Faculty Senate Council’s secretary — John McCarthy, Ph.D., professor of mathematics in Arts & Sciences — are the faculty representatives to the Board of Trustees.
Pike has served in numerous leadership capacities at the University. She served as the preclinical representative to the executive faculty at the medical school from 1995-2001, during which time she directed a faculty survey on the status of women and organized the school’s first faculty retreat.
In addition, she was a member of the Senate Council’s Committee on Gender Pay Equity from 1997-2003, chairing the Medical School Subcommittee.
In 1990, she helped found the Academic Women’s Network to promote networking among women faculty in the School of Medicine. She served as its president from 1992-93 and as editor of its newsletter, AWNings, from 1992-2002.
“At the medical school, I have been engaged in many activities that are directed toward enhancing the careers of women scientists and physicians,” Pike said. “I hope that as chair of the Faculty Senate Council, I can expand this and work to promote the careers of all women faculty at Washington University.”
She has also served on the University’s judicial board and the medical school’s Faculty Rights Committee, among many other positions.
As chair of the Faculty Senate and the Faculty Senate Council, Pike succeeds Jody A. O’Sullivan, Ph.D., professor of electrical engineering and of biomedical engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science and an associate professor of radiology in the School of Medicine. O’Sullivan served as chair for two years.
Pike’s research, which primarily centers on cell signaling and the control of cell growth, has been published in dozens of medical journals. She has earned numerous Distinguished Service Teaching Awards.
She is associate editor of the Journal of Lipid Research and has also served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Biological Chemistry and Endocrinology.
Pike came to the University in 1984, having earned a bachelor’s degree in 1975 in chemistry from the University of Delaware and a doctorate in biochemistry from Duke University in 1980.
She was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington from 1980-84, working with Washington University alumnus and Nobel Prize winner Edwin Krebs.