Women Faculty in Higher Education Making News

Thelma Thompson, who served as president of the University of Maryland Eastern Shore from 2002 to 2011, has been named to a two-year term as visiting professor of English at Bowie State University in Maryland. Dr. Thompson will be teaching freshman composition.

Dr. Thompson, a native of Jamaica, is a 1970 graduate of Howard University. She holds a master’s degree in English and a Ph.D. in English literature from Howard University.

Sara Waller, an associate professor of philosophy at Montana State University, was named director of the College of Letters and Science Seminar at the university. The seminars introduce new students to college life and are geared to increasing their learning and communication skills.

Dr. Waller joined the Montana State faculty in 2009. She previously, taught at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Dr. Waller is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth and holds master’s and Ph.D. degrees in philosophy from Loyola University of Chicago. She is the editor of Serial Killers: Philosophy for Everyone (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010).

Cristina Teixeira, an associate professor of orthodontics, was named chair of the department of orthodontics at the New York University College of Dentistry. She has served as interim chair for the past year. She has been on the faculty at NYU since 2001.

Dr. Teixeira holds bachelor’s, master’s, Ph.D., and dental medicine degrees from the University of Pennsylvania.

Mary Lou Soffa, the Owens R. Cheatham Professor of Science at the University of Virginia, was elected as a member-at-large of the Association for Computing Machinery Council, the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society.

Dr. Soffa hold a bachelor’s degree and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Pittsburgh. She earned a master’s degree in mathematics at Ohio State University.