Four Women Named to Endowed Chairs at Vanderbilt University

Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, has announced the appointment of 12 faculty members to endowed chairs. Four of the new appointees are women.

Shari L. Barkin was appointed to the William K. Warren Foundation Chair in Medicine at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. She is the director of the division of general pediatrics at the medical school.

Dr. Barkin is a graduate of the medical school at the University of Cincinnati.

Heidi E. Hamm was named to the Aileen M. Lange and Annie Mary Lyle Chair in Cardiovascular Research at the medical school. She is chair of the department of pharmacology.

Dr. Hamm is a graduate of Atlantic Union College in South Lancaster, Massachusetts, and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Texas.

Linda D. Norman was appointed to the Valere Potter Menefee Chair in Nursing at the Vanderbilt School of Nursing. She is also the senior associate dean for academics at the nursing school.

Dr. Norman is a graduate of the University of Virginia. She holds master’s and doctoral degrees in nursing from the University of Alabama Birmingham.

Tracy D. Sharpley-Whiting was named to the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in African American and Diaspora Studies and French. She is the author of Pimps Up, Ho’s Down: Hip Hop’s Hold on Young Black Women (New York University Press, 2007), Black Venus: Sexualized Savages, Primal Fears, and Primitive Narratives in French (Duke University Press, 2009), and Negritude Women (University of Minnesota Press, 2002). She is also the co-editor of The Black Feminist Reader (Wiley-Blackwell, 2000).

Professor Sharpley-Whiting holds a Ph.D. from Brown University.