Five Women Promoted to Full Professor at Davidson College

Davidson College, the highly rated liberal arts educational institution in North Carolina, has announced that eight faculty members have been promoted to the rank of full professor. Five of the eight new full professors are women.

(L to R) Kristie L. Foley, Ann M. Fox, Karen G. Hales, Laurie J. Heyer, and Barbara Lom

Kristie L. Foley was promoted to professor of medical humanities. She joined the faculty at Davidson College as an associate professor in 2008. Previously, she taught at Wake Forest University.

Dr. Foley is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she majored in psychology. She earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in health behavior and health education from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Ann M. Fox was named professor of English. Her work is concentrated in twentieth-century dramatic literature and disability studies. She is also the coordinator for the gender studies concentration at Davidson.

Fox is a graduate of the University at Buffalo of the State University of New York system. She earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. at Indiana University.

Karen G. Hales is a professor of biology. She joined the Davidson faculty in 2000 and was promoted to associate professor in 2006. She did postdoctoral research and served as an instructor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Dr. Hales is a graduate of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. She earned a Ph.D. in genetics from the Stanford University School of Medicine.

Laurie J. Heyer was promoted to professor of mathematics. She joined the Davidson College faculty in 2000 after conducting postdoctoral research at the Center for Computational and Experimental Genomics at the University of Southern California. She is currently on sabbatical and is a visiting scholar at the University of Victoria.

Dr. Heyer holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Texas at Arlington. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Colorado. She is the co-author of the textbook Discovering Genomics, Proteomics and Bioinformatics (Benjamin Cummings, 2006).

Barbara Lom was named professor of biology. She also is the chair of the biology department at the college. Her research is focuses on cellular and molecular neuroscience, particularly on neurons that connect the eye to the brain.

Dr. Lom is a graduate of Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. She holds a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Northwestern University.