Schaeffer honored with 2020 Graduate Program Chair Leadership Award

Stephen Schaeffer, professor and associate department head of graduate education in the Department of Biology at Penn State, has been honored as the 2020 recipient of the Graduate School Alumni Society Graduate Program Chair Leadership Award. The award honors faculty members for exemplary leadership that benefits graduate students and faculty in an existing graduate program at the University.

Schaeffer has led the biology department’s graduate program since 2015 and in that time has made numerous improvements that benefit both students and faculty, according to colleagues. He began a monthly colloquium that features speakers on various career paths and gives students an opportunity to discuss topics such as financial planning and mental health. He partnered with similar graduate programs—as well as the Huck Institutes of Life Sciences—for twice-a-year discussions on pursuing career options.

Through partnerships with the Graduate Research Fellowship Program and the Graduate School, Schaeffer offers workshops that highlight awards for graduate students and as well as workshops to help students secure these awards.

Schaeffer is a leader in improving the diversity of graduate students. Each year, he attends two conferences for underrepresented students to build relationships with potential graduate students. His goal is to showcase opportunities available at Penn State while diversifying graduate candidates. Some of the students Schaeffer has recruited have gone on to earn some of the University’s most prestigious graduate fellowships.

“Schaeffer has made a tremendous contribution to the biology graduate program during the past five years,” a colleague said. “He not only keeps things running smoothly, but is implementing new and important initiatives that enhance student success. His efforts at the personal level, as well as programs implemented at the departmental, college, and University levels have made an important contribution to the diversity, career development, and success of our graduate students.”

Schaeffer’s research is focused on the genomic processes that alter gene and chromosomal frequencies in natural populations of plants and animals. His laboratory tests hypotheses about how inversions—segments of a chromosome that have been reversed end-to-end—arise, spread, and are maintained in populations using next-generation DNA sequencing technologies. Schaeffer’s lab has collaborated on projects to understand the ecological and genetic factors that shape the communities of organisms, such as tubeworms, that live in cold seeps and hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor in the Gulf of Mexico.

Schaeffer’s previous awards and honors include being named a recipient of the inaugural Eberly College of Science Distinguished Faculty Mentoring Award in 2019, which award was created to honor faculty members in the college for their outstanding work in mentoring both students and faculty. He was honored with the college’s Climate and Diversity Award, sponsored by the Eberly College of Science Climate and Diversity Committee, in 2016 and has received two Penn State Collaborative Instructional and Curricular Innovation Awards.

Schaeffer joined the faculty at Penn State in 1988 as an assistant professor, was promoted to associate professor in 1994, and to professor in 2011. Prior to that, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University from 1985 to 1988. Schaeffer earned a bachelor’s degree in biology at West Virginia Wesleyan College in 1978, a master’s degree in biology at West Virginia University in 1980, and a doctoral degree in genetics at the University of Georgia in 1985.