Education

B.A., Political Science, Temple University
Ph.D., Communication, Temple University

Responsibilities

Professor Mary Anne Fitzpatrick is responsible for all faculty hiring, tenure and promotional processes, faculty work life policy implementation, and faculty development activities from new faculty orientations to senior leadership training.

Included in her portfolio is the Center for Teaching Excellence which offers numerous programs to support faculty. Serving as the deputy director (faculty) of the Office of Civil Rights and Title IX, Fitzpatrick is responsible for the faculty ombuds program as well as the faculty civility office and works closely in an ex officio capacity with major committees of the Faculty Senate.  

Fitzpatrick chairs the USC Policy Advisory Committee which governs the creation, oversight and revision of all formal USC Columbia and System policies.

Research and Scholarship

Fitzpatrick has published seven books; three special issues of major journals and over 100 major peer reviewed articles and book chapters. A co-founder of the International Association for Relationship Research, she has been the Cambridge University Press editor for an influential series of books, Advances in Personal Relationships.  She has lectured extensively on her research in this country and abroad.  The quality, reach and impact of her scholarship is very broad. She has published in major peer reviewed journals and handbooks in communication, social psychology, clinical psychology, developmental psychology, health psychology, family sociology, as well as text and discourse studies. Her research has been funded by NIH, NSF, the Spencer Foundation, the Kellogg Foundation and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.

In addition to a number of prestigious awards for various books and articles, Fitzpatrick is a Fellow of four major learned societies (i.e., AAAS; ICA: NCA; IARR).  These honors are reserved for faculty scholars of exceptional ability who have achieved national and international distinction in their research careers. She is regularly contacted by faculty and graduate students around the world who request permission to utilize one of her paradigms and measurement techniques in their own research.   The candidate’s research has been referenced and discussed in most major interpersonal textbooks published in the past twenty years. Generations of students have benefitted from her insights on communication in social and personal relationships.