Katherine Vaz was appointed the Sidney Harman Writer in Residence for the 2012-13 academic year at the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences at Baruch College, part of the City University of New York. Vaz is a Portuguese-American novelist and a writer for The New York Times. Among her works are Saudade (St. Martin’s Press, 1996 ), Mariana (HarperCollins, 1997), and Our Lady of the Artichokes and Other Portuguese-American Stories (Bison Books, 2007), which won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction.
Vaz will be teaching a fiction workshop this fall.
Barbara Butler will join the faculty at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University in July 2013. She currently serves as professor of trumpet at the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University. She previously taught at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester.
Butler is a graduate of Northwestern University. Her husband, Charles Geyer, also an accomplished trumpeter, will join her on the faculty at Rice University.
Ruth Haas was appointed the Achilles Professor at Smith College. She joined the Smith faculty in 1989 and was promoted to full professor of mathematics and statistics in 2002.
Dr. Haas is a graduate of Swarthmore College. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Cornell University. She is completing a four-year term on the executive committee of the Association of Women in Mathematics.
Vidhya Selvaraj was appointed an instructor and a practicing psychiatrist at the Women’s Health Center of the Creighton University Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska. She was a psychiatrist at the Omaha Veterans Administration Hospital.
A graduate of the Stanley Medical College in Chennai, India, she completed residencies at the North West Wales HHS Trust Hospital in Bangor, Wales, and the Creighton University/University of Nebraska Psychiatry Residency Program.
Rooth Varland was named chair of the department of theatre arts at North Dakota State University. She is an associate professor and costume designer. Varland joined the faculty at NDSU in 2000 after teaching at the University of Mississippi.
Varland holds a master of fine arts degree from Northwestern University.
Lara Bartl was appointed assistant professor of community practice at the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine in Blacksburg, Virginia. She was the medical director of Alexandria Animal Hospital.
Dr. Bartl holds a bachelor’s degree and a doctorate in veterinary medicine from Virginia Tech. She was president of the Class of 1997 at the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine.