ASU Charter Professors
Recognizing commitment to ASU’s charter
A Charter Professor’s record reflects a commitment to ASU’s charter: inclusion and success, research of public value and responsibility for the well-being of the community. The Charter Professor title is, therefore, a temporary credential to signal the close engagement of a particular faculty member with issues relevant to ASU and its charter.
Each year, ASU will sponsor faculty members — tenured or tenure-track faculty member(s) and career-track faculty member(s) — to serve as Charter Professors for a period of three years. Funding will be provided to support the charter-focused projects of each ASU faculty chosen for this honor.
Nominations for Charter Professors are made by ASU deans and are now open. Please sign in with your ASURite ID and password on the upper-right corner of this page, then click the button to enter the nomination form.
Units needing to assign a dean’s designee to submit the nomination, please contact Karen Engler-Weber ([email protected]) for access.
2025 Charter Professors
Laura Hosman
Associate professor
School for the Future of Innovation in Society
Rob Walton College of Global Futures
Hosman exemplifies use-inspired research that serves the public good. Her work developing and deploying solar-powered digital libraries has expanded global access to education and information—dramatically increasing literacy and digital equity in underserved communities around the world.
Daniel Frank
Associate teaching professor
Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering
Frank consistently exemplifies ASU’s Charter through a sustained commitment to inclusion, innovation and community impact. His latest project, developing an electronic adaptation kit that transforms Power Wheels Jeeps into affordable mobility devices for children with disabilities, extends a long record of advancing access and empathy through engineering.
2024 Charter Professors
Maureen McCoy
Teaching professor
College of Health Solutions
McCoy has been recognized for her efforts as faculty advisor and student mentor for the student-led nonprofit Pitchfork Pantry. The pantry was developed to address student food insecurity and is designed to provide immediate access to free, nutritious food, essential clothing and hygiene products for ASU students.
Trevor Reed
Professor of law
Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law
Reed stands out for his pursuit of inclusive innovation as a core tenant of his research, teaching and service. He works to help Indigenous creatives, entrepreneurs and inventors understand what rights they have to their work and navigate the complex world of intellectual property ownership.
2023 Charter Professors
Sara Brownell
President’s professor
School of Life Sciences
The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Brownell's research focuses on inclusive excellence in undergraduate STEM education, attending to strategies to promote student success across a range of intersectional identities and lived experiences.
Stacey Gandy
Assistant professor
School of Social Work
Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions
Gandy's commitment to ASU’s Charter and design aspirations are most clearly reflected in her work with the Community Collaborative, an interdisciplinary community project that crosscuts six colleges and schools across ASU.
Karen Knierman
Assistant teaching professor
School of Earth and Space Exploration
The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Knierman’s passion for astronomy and physics education is not only evident in her ASU classrooms, but in her impact on the broader community. Knierman has trained more than 500 teachers to use the Starlab portable planetarium.
Gilberto Lopez
Assistant professor
School of Transborder Studies
The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Lopez’s research focuses on addressing social and health disparities in the Latino community, demonstrating his commitment to ASU’s focus on research of public value that promotes community well-being.