By Megan Finnerty
Asst. Campus Editor

The director of the African-American Studies and Research Center could have chosen a life of the haute couture runways of Paris, Milan and New York for herself. Instead, she chose one of the great institutions, universities and libraries in those cities.

Although appreciative of the supplementary money that modeling afforded her during her graduate work at Brown University in Providence, R.I., Tracy Sharpley-Whiting, who is associate professor of foreign languages and literatures, always knew that a career in academia was what she wanted.

"Modeling was fun and it was a way to supplement my graduate-student stipend, but I knew where my convictions were," she said. "I knew I was intellectual and that was where I wanted to be."

Sharpley-Whiting does not only have a striking and formidable physical presence, talking to her for any length of time reveals that her intellectual presence is just as remarkable.

When Sharpley-Whiting came to Purdue in 1994, she was the first African-American woman in the foreign languages and literatures department. Since then, she has been involved in French instruction, African-American studies instruction, the African-American Studies and Research Center and research into the interlocking nexus of race, gender, class and sexuality.

She has recently returned from a sabbatical in the south of France where she was doing research on her sixth book; this is the third she has authored alone. Right now, however, she has been focusing her efforts on the improvement and expansion of the center.

Concerned with expanding the number of students in the African- American Studies Program, Sharpley-Whiting has been working to recruit more students as African-American studies majors and expand the curriculum.

She said the program is for all students and the demographics of the classes exhibit that. She said she feels as though people understand that there is a great deal to learn from African-American studies.

Faculty recruitment has also been a major priority for Sharpley-Whiting since she became the director in the fall of '99. She has recently hired a new faculty member to be joint-appointed between Sociology and African-American studies and is in the process of interviewing another to be joint-appointed to foreign languages and literatures and African-American studies.

"I enjoy seeing the vision that I have for the program being actualized; we have a lot of programs and recruitment going on now," she said. "We are moving to a new level and I feel like we have much more presence now and we are really contributing to campus."

She has also been working to increase the profile of the center and the program by co-sponsoring "The Women Writers Series" with Purdue University Libraries. The series brings women authors to Purdue to lecture and discuss literature and issues. Toni Morrison will be coming in September as a part of this series.

Margaret Rowe, dean of the School of Liberal Arts, said she feels Sharpley-Whiting has brought great vigor to her administration of the center.

"The center is recruiting faculty, looking at its course offerings and reaching out through 'The Women Writers Series'," she said. "The center is in good hands."