Six Women in New Faculty Roles

Shirley Franklin, the former mayor of Atlanta, was named the Barbara Jordan Visiting Professor in Ethics and Political Values at the Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. Franklin served as mayor of Atlanta from 2002 to 2010.

Franklin is a graduate of Howard University in Washington, D.C., and holds a master’s degree in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania.

Janie Simms Hipp was appointed visiting professor of law and director of the Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative at the University of Arkansas School of Law. The initiative will focus on tribal food systems, agriculture, and community sustainability.

Hipp was the senior adviser for tribal relations to Thomas Vilsack, the U.S. secretary of agriculture. She is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma and the law school at Oklahoma City University. She holds a master’s degree in agricultural law from the University of Arkansas.

Vivian Fluellen was named interim chair of the department of family and consumer science at Fort Valley State University in Georgia. Fluellen has been a member of the staff at the university for more than 20 years.

Fluellen is a graduate of Fort Valley State University and holds a master’s degree from Iowa State University. She is currently completing work on a doctorate in family and consumer science education at Iowa State.

Larissa Williams is a new assistant professor of biology at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. An aquatic toxicologist, she was a visiting assistant professor at Wheaton College.

Dr. Williams  is a graduate of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, and holds a Ph.D. in environmental toxicology from North Carolina State University in Raleigh.

Gloria Choi was named an assistant professor of brain and cognitive science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She will also serve as a principal investigator at the university’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research. She is currently conducting postdoctoral research at Columbia University.

Dr. Choi is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and holds a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology.

Robin Fontenot is a new clinical instructor in large animal surgery at the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine, headquartered at Virginia Tech. Before coming to Virginia Tech, she was and an intern in equine medicine and surgery at College of Veterinary Medicine at Mississippi State University.

Dr. Fontenot holds a bachelor’s degree and a doctorate in veterinary medicine from Mississippi State University. She earned a master’s degree at the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine.