Janel Curry

Janel M. Curry is an American geographer and academic administrator. She currently leads the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA) as its president, having spent much of her earlier career in academic administration — most notably as provost of Gordon College and, later, interim vice president for academic affairs at Medaille College.

Early life and education Curry is a 1977 graduate of Bethel College (now Bethel University), where she earned a B.A. in political science with high honors. She then moved on to the University of Minnesota for graduate work in geography, completing her M.A. in 1981 and her Ph.D. in 1985. Eleven years later she moved to Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, as a professor of geography and environmental studies. At Calvin she held two endowed chairs over the years — the Spoelhof Teacher-Scholar Chair (1996–97) and, later, the Byker Chair in Christian Perspectives in Business, Economics, and Political Science (2008–2012) — and from 2000 to 2009 served as the college's dean of research and scholarship.

Curry became provost of Gordon College in 2012, a post she held until 2020, taking her final year as sabbatical.

It was during her time at Gordon that Curry received her third career Fulbright award: a 2019 Fulbright Specialist appointment supporting the development of a leadership center at Forman Christian College in Lahore, Pakistan. Gordon's own announcement of the award traced her earlier Fulbright work back to a fellowship in general education at City University of Hong Kong. Coverage of the appointment noted she had already been an ASA fellow and member for 25 years by that point.

Selected publications Curry, Janel M., and Paul Hanstedt, eds. Reading Hong Kong, Reading Ourselves. City University of Hong Kong Press, 2014. Curry, Janel M., and Ronald A. Wells, eds. Faithful Imagination in the Academy: Explorations in Religious Belief and Scholarship. Lexington Books, 2008. Curry, Janel M., and Steve McGuire. Community on Land: Community, Ecology, and the Public Interest. Rowman and Littlefield, 2002.