UNIVERSITY PARK – Josh Wede, teaching professor of psychology, officially assumed his new role as chair of Penn State’s Faculty Senate in July. As he begins his tenure as chair, Wede said his primary goal is to elevate faculty voices and continue the senate’s work to help shape University decision-making.
“To put your trust in me is really humbling and something I’m very grateful for,” Wede told the senate during his first meeting as chair on July 9. “I believe in Penn State, I believe in our students, and I believe that the work we do as an institution can have a positive impact on the world. But it’s not easy. We’re in a time of massive change, and change is uncomfortable. But these challenges also present opportunities to work together and come out stronger on the other side.”
Wede succeeds Michele Stine, teaching professor of biobehavioral health, who served as senate chair for the 2022-23 and 2023-24 academic years. Wede served as secretary and chair-elect during that period.
Wede said he’s grateful for progress made during Stine’s tenure to strengthen shared University leadership – establishing the Shared Governance Joint Task Force, in particular – and hopes to build upon those efforts.
First elected to Faculty Senate in 2020, an early priority for Wede was updating the process for faculty teaching assessments. He has served on many committees during his time in the senate, including the Faculty Affairs Committee and Faculty Advisory Commitee to the President. He was elected secretary for the 2022-23 academic year, then chair-elect in 2023.
“One of my goals is to push the senate to be more forward looking, rather than reacting,” Wede said. “We are planning, for the first time, to have each of the standing committees develop priorities for the next five years."
He also hopes to work with his senate colleagues to develop a mechanism to allow more faculty to get involved with the senate and offer their expertise on policies in other ways outside of running for a seat.
Wede arrived at Penn State in 2009 from Purdue University, where he graduated in 2008 with a doctoral degree in cognitive psychology and met his wife. He accepted a job as a lecturer, and said he quickly grew to love teaching.
“I fell in love with being in front of the classroom and exciting students about material they’ve never been exposed to and thinking about things in new ways,” Wede said. “Seeing their eyes light up is one of the best experiences you can get in the whole world.”
Over his 16 years of teaching, Wede has developed a passion for student success, which he said motivated him to run for senate chair. Once he began teaching, Wede shifted his research track to focus on student studying and learning strategies and got deeply involved in the teaching and learning community at Penn State.
He has served as co-chair of the Liberal Arts Teaching Group, the Task Force on Teaching Effectiveness, Innovative Teaching at Penn State (ITAP) and the Faculty Advisory Group to the COVID response teams. In these roles, he helped implement a new framework for evaluating teaching effectiveness, highlighting successful teaching innovations and elevating faculty voices in the University’s decision-making process.
Wede was the associate head for instruction for the Department of Psychology from 2022-23, during which time he supervised 28 full-time faculty members and was responsible for all aspects of undergraduate education across the department’s 1,400 majors and pre-majors and two degree programs. He directed the psychology program for Penn State World Campus, which has been repeatedly recognized as a top program by U.S. News and World Report.
Wede holds a doctoral and master’s degree in cognitive psychology, both from Purdue University, and a bachelor’s degree in psychology and animal science from Iowa State. He also served as a fellow for the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) Academic Leadership Program (ALP) for 2023-24.