Three Women Scholars Named to Endowed Chairs

Kristin Boudreau was appointed to the Paris Fletcher Distinguished Professorship in the Humanities and Arts at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. Professor Boudreau joined the faculty at the university in 2009. From 1997 to 2009, she served on the English department faculty at the University of Georgia.

Professor Boudreau is a graduate of Cornell University, where she majored in English. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Rochester. Among her books are Sympathy in American Literature: American Sentiment from Jefferson to the Jameses (University Press of Florida, 2002); The Spectacle of Death: Populist Literary Responses to American Capital Cases (Prometheus Books, 2006); and Henry James’s Narrative Technique: Consciousness, Perception, and Cognition (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

Helen Reed was appointed to the Edward “Pete” Aldridge ’60 Professorship in the Dwight Look College of Engineering at Texas A&M University. She was serving as a professor of aerospace engineering at the university.

Dr. Reed joined the faculty at Texas A&M in 2004 and served as department chair for four years. She is a graduate of Goucher College in Baltimore and holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in engineering mechanics from Virginia Tech.

Cheryl Kerfeld was named the Hannah Professor of Structural Bioengineering at Michigan State University in East Lansing. She joined the faculty at the university in 2013 after teaching at the University of California at Berkeley and working at the U.S. Department of Energy.

Professor Kerfeld holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Minnesota. She earned a Ph.D. in structural biology at the University of California at Los Angeles.