Three Women Appointed to Named Professorships at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln has announced the appointment of six faculty members to named professorships. Three of the six faculty members receiving these named chairs are women.

Susan M. Swearer was named to the Willa Cather/Charles Bessey Professorship in educational psychology. Professor Swearer joined the faculty at the university in 1997. Her research focuses on the prevention of bullying. She is the co-editor of Bullying in American Schools: A Social-Ecological Perspective on Prevention and Intervention (Routledge, 2003). Professor Swearer is a graduate of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. She earned a master’s degree in special education at Pennsylvania State University and a Ph.D. in school psychology at the University of Texas at Austin.

Rebecca Lai was appointed the Susan J. Rosowski Associate Professor of Chemistry at the university. Dr. Lai joined the faculty at the University of Nebraska in 2007 and was promoted to associate professor in 2012. Her research is focused on biosensors and bioanalytical chemistry. Dr. Lai is a graduate of California State University, Los Angeles. She earned a Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin and conducted postdoctoral research at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Laura White was named the John E. Weaver Professor of English. She is an expert on nineteenth-century British literature with a focus on Jane Austen. She joined the faculty at the University of Nebraska in 2000 and was promoted to full professor in 2010. Professor White is a graduate of Yale University and holds a Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. She is the author of three books: Romance, Language, and Education in Jane Austen’s Novels (Macmillan, 1988); Critical Essays on Jane Austen (G.K. Hall, 1998); and Jane Austen’s Anglicanism (Ashgate, 2011).