Seven Women in New Teaching Roles at U.S. Universities

Claire Kathleen Robbins was appointed an assistant professor of higher education at Virginia Tech. During the 2012-13 academic year she was a visiting assistant professor at Virginia Tech.

Dr. Robbins is a graduate of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. She holds a master of social work degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a doctorate in college student personnel administration from the University of Maryland-College Park.

Jessie Ann Owens, dean of the Division of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Davis, has announced that she will step down as dean at the end of the academic year. She has been dean for eight years. After a one-year research leave, she will join the faculty at the university as a professor of music.

Dr. Owens is a graduate of Barnard College in New York City, where she majored in Latin. She holds a master of fine arts degree and a doctorate in music from Princeton University.

Yalun Zhou is a new assistant professor of communication and media at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. Dr. Zhou directs the Chinese language program at RPI. She is the former director of the online programs of the Confucius Institute at Michigan State University.

Dr. Zhou holds a Ph.D. from the University of Missouri at Kansas City.

Lori Rios was named a clinical assistant professor of internal medicine at the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine. She was a small animal internist at veterinary facility in Manakin-Sabot, Virginia.

Dr. Rios is a graduate of Union College in Schenectady, New York. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in psychology from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. She then earned a doctorate in veterinary medicine from Tufts University.

Janet A. Deatrick, co-director of the Center for Health Equity Research at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia was appointed to the Shearer Endowed Term Chair in Healthy Community Practices. Dr. Deatrick has been on the faculty at the university since 1989.

Dr. Deatrick’s research focuses on families caring for children with chronic conditions.

Amy Rupiper Taggart, associate professor of English at North Dakota State University, was named director of general education at the university. Dr. Rupiper Taggart has been on the faculty at North Dakota State since 2002.

Dr. Rupiper Taggart is a graduate of the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. She earned a Ph.D. in English at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth.

Elena Machado Saez, an associate professor of English at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, was named director of the university’s Center for Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Dr. Machado Saez has been on the faculty at the university since 2003.

Dr. Machado Saez is the coauthor of The Latino/a Canon and the Emergence of Post-Sixties Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). She holds a Ph.D. in English from Stony Brook University of the State University of New York system.