Five Women in New Faculty Roles at American Universities

Elodie Ghedin has joined the biology department faculty at New York University. She previously taught at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Her research focuses on parasites that cause tropical diseases.

Dr. Ghedin holds a bachelor’s degree and a Ph.D. from McGill University in Montreal. She also earned a master’s degree at the University of Quebec at Montreal.

Melissa Harris-Perry will join the faculty at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, this summer. She will hold a Presidential Chair in the department of politics and international affairs. Since 2011, Professor Harris-Perry has been a professor of political science at Tulane University in New Orleans. She is also a host and commentator for MSNBC.

Professor Harris Perry is the author of Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought (Princeton University Press, 2004) and Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America (Yale University Press, 2011).

A graduate of Wake Forest University, Professor Harris-Perry holds a Ph.D. in political science from Duke University.

Mary Ellen Poole was appointed to the Florence Thelma Hall Centennial Chair in Music at the University of Texas at Austin, effective September 1. She will also be the director of the Butler School of Music at the university. For the past 10 years, she has served as dean of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Dr. Poole holds degrees in flute performance from Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. She earned a Ph.D. in musicology from the University of Illinois.

Pat Mulroy was named to a faculty position at the Desert Research Institute of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. She will also serve as a senior fellow for climate adaptation and environmental Policy at UNLV’s Brookings Mountain West.

Mulroy was general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority and the Las Vegas Valley Water District.

Connie L. Kohler was named professor emerita of health behavior at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She joined the faculty at the university in 1994 and served twice as director of graduate studies at the university.

Professor Kohler holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Iowa. She earned a doctorate in public health from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.