Jacquelyn S. Fetrow

Jacquelyn S. (Jacque) Fetrow (born 1960) is a computational biologist and college administrator who served as the 15th president of Albright College. Before serving as president she served as Provost, Vice President of Academic Affairs, and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Richmond in Richmond, Virginia. Prior to that appointment, she served as Dean of the College at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She also co-founded GeneFormatics, Inc., for which she served as Director and Chief Scientific Officer for four years.

Early life and education
Fetrow is a native of Camp Hill, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Mildred F. Fetrow, was a public school teacher in the West Shore School District, teaching kindergarten, first grade and second grade for many years. Her father, David E. Fetrow, was a carpenter. He also worked as a truck salesman, real estate salesman, and office manager.

Fetrow attended Camp Hill public schools through twelfth grade, Albright College for her bachelor's degree (Biochemistry), and Penn State College of Medicine for a Ph.D. (Biological Chemistry), which she earned in 1986 working with George D. Rose. She did post-doctoral stints at the University of Rochester School of Medicine under the mentorship of Fred Sherman, and at the Whitehead Institute at Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the tutelage of Peter S. Kim.

Career
Fetrow worked at the University at Albany, SUNY, from 1990 to 1998, serving as assistant and then associate professor of biological sciences. She then accepted a position at The Scripps Research Institute. Technology that she helped develop at Scripps served as the foundation for GeneFormatics, Inc., the company that Fetrow co-founded and at which she served as Chief Scientific Officer and Director. In August 2003 she was appointed Reynolds Professor of Computational Biophysics at Wake Forest University in the departments of Physics and Computer Science, and in January 2009 she was appointed as Dean of Wake Forest College. She moved to the University of Richmond to serve as Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs at the University of Richmond in 2014.

In 2017 Fetrow was appointed president of her alma mater, Albright College. Near the end of her initial five-year term the Albright board unanimously approved an additional five-year contract extension. During her time as president, Albright's reputation and stature grew such that it reached #146 in the US News & World Report National Liberal Arts College rankings in 2023, up from 'uncategorized' (below #200) when she began her term as president. She led the drive to right-size Albright's tuition structure in order to be more transparent and to align better with the higher-education market in Pennsylvania and the socioeconomic realities experienced by the college-age student population. At the same time she led the establishment of the Advancing Lives Scholarships endowment to reduce the tuition gap experienced by returning sophomore, junior, and senior students.

As part of efforts to diversify Albright's revenue streams, Fetrow brought to Albright's campus the highly regarded K-12 STEM spectrum of educational programming, originally called Science Research Institute, which has evolved into Total Experience Learning  and has been recognized by the United Nations. She worked to bolster Albright's strategic vision as an anchor institution in the city of Reading by transitioning the college's Northeast Reading neighborhood into the Innovation Corridor, a destination and a community where residents live, work, learn and play. Local, state and federal governments provided significant support for the development of that vision. Using external funding, Albright installed the first public electric vehicle charging stations in the city of Reading in 2021.

In April 2024, the Albright College faculty passed a vote of no confidence against President Fetrow. In May 2024, Albright board chair Ron Scheese announced that Fetrow would step down from the presidency, effective May 31, 2024.

Research
Fetrow was the first to describe the non-regular protein structure, omega loop, a structure she identified and studied for her doctoral dissertation (work published under the name Jacquelyn F. Leszczynski). Her early research work involved the experimental analysis of these structures in the protein cytochrome c.

Later, Fetrow's work turned to the classification of functional sites in protein structures, resulting in Fuzzy Functional Forms and active site profiling. This work formed the foundation for the company she co-founded, GeneFormatics. Subsequent development of the active site profiling technology was used to create the Peroxiredoxin Classification Index. This technology has been used to cluster other superfamilies, including the enolases, peroxiredoxins, cytochrome P450s, and arsenate reductases, into functionally relevant clusters.

Awards and honors

 * Alumni Fellow, Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, 2015
 * Distinguished Alumnus/a Award, Albright College, October 2010
 * Honorary member, Phi Beta Kappa, Wake Forest University, April 2009
 * Teaching Innovation Award (for Bioinformatics course, developed with David John), Center for Teaching and Learning, Wake Forest University, February 2006
 * Young Alumnus/a Achievement Award, Albright College, May 1997
 * Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching, University at Albany, Spring, 1995 (A SUNY-wide award)
 * President's Award for Excellence in Teaching, University at Albany, Spring, 1995
 * Member, Jacob Albright Society of Scholars (for high academic achievement), Albright College, May 1982
 * NRSA Postdoctoral Fellowship (NIH). January, 1987–January, 1990.

Selected publications

 * Rosen, MR, Leuthaeuser, JB, Parish, CA, & Fetrow, JS (2020). Isofunctional Clustering and Conformational Analysis of the Arsenate Reductase Superfamily Reveals Nine Distinct Clusters. Biochemistry, 59(44), 4262-4284, doi: 10.1021/acs.biochem.0c00651.
 * Harper AF, Leuthaeuser JB, Babbitt PC, Morris JH, Ferrin TE, Poole LB, Fetrow JS. An Atlas of Peroxiredoxins Created Using an Active Site Profile-Based Approach to Functionally Relevant Clustering of Proteins. PLoS Comput Biol. 2017 Feb 10;13(2):e1005284. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005284. eCollection 2017 Feb. PMID 28187133
 * Gober JG, Rydeen AE, Gibson-O'Grady EJ, Leuthaeuser JB, Fetrow JS, Brustad EM. Mutating a Highly Conserved Residue in Diverse Cytochrome P450s Facilitates Diastereoselective Olefin Cyclopropanation. Chembiochem. 2016 Mar 2;17(5):394-7. doi: 10.1002/cbic.201500624. Epub 2016 Feb 4. PMID 26690878. PMCID: 5241096.
 * Loeser RF, Olex A, McNulty MA, Carlson CS, Callahan M, Ferguson C, Chou J, Leng X, Fetrow JS. Microarray analysis reveals age-related differences in gene expression during the development of osteoarthritis in mice. Arthritis Rheum. 2012 Mar;64(3):705-17. Epub 2011 Oct 3. doi: 10.1002/art.33388. [Epub ahead of print]
 * Lewis DR, Olex AL, Lundy SR, Turkett WH, Fetrow JS, Muday GK. A kinetic analysis of the auxin transcriptome reveals cell wall remodeling proteins that modulate lateral root development in Arabidopsis. Plant Cell. 2013 Sep;25(9):3329-46. doi: 10.1105/tpc.113.114868. Epub 2013 Sep 17.
 * Nelson KJ, Knutson ST, Soito L, Klomsiri C, Poole LB, Fetrow JS. Analysis of the peroxiredoxin family: using active-site structure and sequence information for global classification and residue analysis. Proteins. 2011 Mar;79(3):947-64. doi: 10.1002/prot.22936. Epub 2010 Dec 22.
 * Salsbury Jr., F.R., Knutson, S.T., Poole, LB, and Fetrow, J.S. Functional Site Profiling and Electrostatic Analysis of Cysteines Modifiable to Cysteine Sulfenic Acid. Protein Sci. 2008 Feb;17(2):299-312.
 * Skolnick, J. and Fetrow, J.S. From genes to structure: novel applications of computational approaches in the genomic era. Trends in Biotech. 2000 Jan;18(1):34-39.
 * Skolnick, J., Fetrow, J.S., Kolinski, A. Structural genomics and its importance for gene function analysis.  Nature Biotechnology. 2000 Mar;18(3):283-287.
 * Fetrow, J.S. and Skolnick, J. Method for prediction of protein function from sequence using the sequence-to-structure-to-function paradigm with application to glutaredoxins/thioredoxins and T1 ribonucleases. J. Mol. Biol. 1998 Sep 4;281(5):949-968.
 * Fetrow, J.S. and Godzik, A. Function driven protein evolution: A possible proto-protein for the RNA-binding proteins. Proceedings of Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing (Ed. R.B. Altman, A.K. Dunker, L. Hunter T. Klein). 1998 485-496.
 * Fetrow, J.S. Omega Loops:  Nonregular secondary structures significant in protein function and stability. FASEB J. 1995 Jun;9(9):708-717.
 * Leszczynski (Fetrow), J.F. and Rose, G.D. Loops in globular proteins:  Identification of a novel category of secondary structure.  Science. 1986 Nov 14;234(4778):849-55.