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Bios for Candidates for Chair-Elect

Don Mulvaney and James E. Witte

Don Mulvaney holds a B.S. degree in Animal Sciences from the University of Illinois and the M.S. and Ph.D. in Animal Science from Michigan State University. His career scholarly works include over $7 million in grants and approximately 250 refereed journal articles, non-refereed articles, abstracts at national/international meetings, and invited presentations combined plus service on various journal editorial boards and grant proposal review panels.

In addition to research areas of animal sciences, he has developed over 20 courses at Auburn including animal sciences, leadership and ag communication, teaches in the Honors College, has served as advisor for multiple student organizations, serves on national teaching committees and developed and coordinated a USDA NIFA funded Multicultural Scholars Program in Pre-veterinary Medicine and an Agricultural Leadership Education Academy. He developed and coordinated the minor in leadership studies within the College of Agriculture, co-developed and facilitated the AU LEAD minor and revised the Ag Communications curriculum. 
He currently serves on the Advisory Council for the Interdisciplinary Studies Curriculum degree within the University College, the Honors College Advisory Council and the Faculty Outreach and Engagement Council.  As a Coordinator of Leadership and Student Development for the College of Agriculture, he directed Leadership programming which included the minor in Leadership Studies, leadership and ag communication courses, internships, workshops, extracurricular leadership development programs, a faculty-staff leadership development program model, training programs plus served in multiple roles within the college student services and academic affairs.  He is a former Faculty Fellow Associate Director for the Biggio Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning where he facilitated New Faculty Scholars, Future Faculty mentoring, classroom assessments and other professional faculty development programs. He is an early adopter of EASL and involved in multiple initiatives around teaching technologies. He was recognized by the USDA as a Community of Scholars Honoring Excellence recipient, is a two-time recipient of the Dean’s Teaching Award, an SGA Outstanding Faculty Award, a 2017 COA Project Team Award and Auburn University's 2018 Award for Excellence in Faculty Outreach.

He has several years’ experience in shared governance at the university, college, and department levels. He served the university Teaching Effectiveness Committee for five years and chaired it for four advancing work to change the S.E.T.’s and developed the Departmental Award for Excellence in Education. He has served on several senate and ad hoc committees including Program Reviews, Administrator Reviews, Competency Based Curricula and creation of Copyright Policy. In addition to service as a Senator, he has served as an at-large Senator, and twice on the Senate Steering Committee, served as Senate Secretary and Chaired the Senate Rules Committee.

James E. Witte received his Ph.D. in Adult Education with a cognate in Statistics and Measurement and completed post-doctoral studies in Vocational Education. He has held faculty positions with St. Leo College and the University of South Florida. He joined the Auburn University faculty in 1999 and currently serves as a professor of Adult Education and Program Coordinator for the Adult Education Workforce Development Programs.

Dr. Witte has over 55 publications related to teaching. He has also has been involved in numerous international educational activities including Mexico, South Africa, Malawi, Tunisia, Cuba and Egypt.
He has chaired, served as a committee member or outside reader for over 360 graduate and advanced graduate students. He has also developed, revised or created over 36 courses of instruction with supporting website materials. His awards include both the College of Education’s Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching (2002) and Graduate Teaching (2006) awards, College of Education – Student Government Association’s Professor (2000-2001) award, and the Graduate School’s Outstanding Faculty Mentor (2017-2018).  In addition, he has also received the Commission of Professors of Adult Education Award for Curriculum Innovation (2013) and the Presidential Award for Outstanding Leadership in Adult Education (2017).

In addition he has served on many department, college and university committees including serving as a member of the Non-Tenure Track Faculty Senate Committee (2014-2017), Executive Committee, AU Chapter of AAUP (2014-present), and the Student Academic Grievance Committee (2015-2016). He has also held positions with the Parking Appeals Committee (member and chair), multiple Senate Representative terms, Senate Parliamentarian (2017-2019), Student Affairs Committee, Board of Trustees (2015-2016), the Senate Rules Committee and the University P&T Committee.

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Bios for Candidates for Secretary-Elect

Ken Macklin and Gregory J. Schmidt

Ken Macklin is a Professor and Extension Specialist in the Department of Poultry Science. He has been employed by Auburn University since 1996 and a faculty member at AU since 2006. As a faculty member he has served in the University Senate as a senator (two terms). Has served as a chair for the University’s Traffic (parking) Appeals Committee (two terms), as well as serving on the University Grievance and Patent Committees. At the college level he has served on several committees most recently the College’s Promotion and Tenure Committee. Additionally he is serving the College of Agriculture as a team leader for Animal Production, the objective of this group is to assist in forming partnerships within and outside the college for research and grantsmanship.

Gregory J. Schmidt is a Librarian III in the Special Collections and Archives Department at AU Libraries. He has worked at Auburn since 1992 and has been a member of the Auburn University Faculty since 2008. In his position at the Libraries, he serves as rare books librarian and liaison to both the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, & Social Work, and the Sustainability Studies minor. As Special Collections and Archives Librarian and as coordinator of the Discover Auburn Lecture Series, he has communicated and collaborated extensively across academic disciplines at Auburn. He served as a search committee member for the past two Dean of Libraries hires, on several Administrative Review Committees, and as an IGP grant reviewer. He is in his second term as Senator for the Libraries. As Senator, he has served two terms on the Rules Committee. Prior to his service as Senator, he was a regular member of Traffic Appeals Committees. Beyond Auburn, he is a past President of the Society of Alabama Archivists and is an active committee member in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries. Mr. Schmidt’s scholarly work has focused on user engagement in Special Collections and the development of archival and rare books research skills. In 2017, he served as instructor of record for the History Department’s course, Fundamentals of Archival Theory and Practice and has twice co-taught the first-year seminar course, Discover Auburn: AU History and Traditions.

Last Updated:February 26, 2019