Fourteen Women Taking on New Administrative Roles in Higher Education

Ann Ardis was appointed interim deputy provost at the University of Delaware. She has been serving as deputy dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the university and as director of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Research Center. Dr. Ardis joined the University of Delaware faculty in 1989 as an assistant professor of English. She was promoted to full professor in 2002.

Dr. Ardis is a graduate of the University of Kansas. She holds master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Virginia.

Noel Schultz, the LeRoy C. and Aileen H. Paslay Professor of Electrical Engineering and director of the Electrical Power Affiliates Program at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, was appointed associate dean for research and graduate programs in the university’s College of Engineering.

Professor Schultz has been on the Kansas State faculty since 2009. She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Virginia Tech and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Minnesota.

Mitra Dutta was named vice chancellor for research at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is a distinguished professor and chair of the department of electrical and computer engineering at the university and has been serving in the post on an interim basis since the beginning of the year. She has been on the UIC faculty since 2001 and previously was a senior executive at the U.S. Army Research Office.

Dr. Dutta is a graduate of Gauhati University in India. She holds a master’s degree from the University of Delhi and a second master’s degree and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Cincinnati.

Megan Riebe was named associate vice president for development and executive director of the University of Alaska Foundation. She has been serving as director of development for strategy and leadership gifts at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. Previously, she served in several development positions at Washington State University.

Riebe holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration and marketing from Washington State University.

Wynde Fitts was promoted to associate dean of students at the University of Southern Mississippi. She has been serving as director of the Office of the First Year Experience and previously was director of Greek life.

Fitts holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree in counseling and personnel services from the University of Southern Mississippi.

Kimberly Marten, a professor of political science at Barnard College, was named acting director of the Harriman Institute at Columbia University. The institute is devoted to the study of countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union. Professor Marten recently published her fourth book, Warlords: Strong-Arm Brokers in Weak States (Cornell University Press, 2012).

Professor Marten is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard University. She earned a Ph.D. at Stanford University.

Melinda Cotten was named director of the Office of Sponsored Research at Rice University in Houston. Since 2008, she has been the executive director of the Office of Sponsored Programs at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

At Rice, Cotten will oversee sponsored research programs that totaled more than $115 million in 2011.

Amy Sadao was appointed the Daniel Dietrich II Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania. She has been serving as director of Visual AIDS, an art organization in New York City.

A graduate of the Cooper Union School of Art in New York City, Sadao earned a master’s degree in comparative ethnic studies at the University of California at Berkeley.

Laura Todd Johnson was named general counsel and vice president for legal affairs at the University of Arizona. She has been on the legal staff at the university for the past decade.

Johnson holds bachelor’s and law degrees from the University of Arizona.

Jeanne Jones Manzer was appointed executive director of the South Dakota World Affairs Council, a nonprofit organization formed in 2004 at the University of South Dakota to promote education of world affairs.

Manzer has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Iowa State University and a master’s degree in English from South Dakota State University.

Kathryn Berry Bertram was named director of K-12 Outreach Operations at the University of Alaska at Anchorage. She has been serving as director of K-12 education and outreach for the university’s Geophysical Institute.

Dr. Bertram is a graduate of Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio. She earned a master of public administration degree at Indiana University and a doctorate at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks.

Christine Ashby was promoted to director of the Institute on Communication and Inclusion in the School of Education at Syracuse University in New York. Since 2009, she has been director of research at the institute.

Dr. Ashby holds master’s and doctoral degrees in special education from Syracuse University.

Susan V. Bryant was named interim provost and executive vice chancellor at the University of California at Irvine. Dr Bryant joined the university’s faculty in 1969 and retired from teaching in 2010. She has served the university as dean of biological sciences and vice chancellor for research.

Dr. Bryant holds bachelor’s and Ph.D. degrees from the University of London.

Jessica S. McDonald was appointed the Nancy Inman and Marlene Nathan Meyerson Curator of Photography at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. She was a curator of photography for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

McDonald will assume her new role in September.