Six Women in New Teaching Roles

Sarah Demers was appointed the Horace D. Taft Associate Professor of Physics at Yale University. Dr. Demers joined the Yale faculty in 2009 after serving as a research associate at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford University.

Dr. Demers is a graduate of Harvard University. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Rochester in New York.

Margaret Skurka was named a Chancellor’s Professor at Indiana University Northwest in Gary. She hs been serving as a professor of health information management. Professor Skurka joined the staff at the university in 1977 and was named an assistant professor in 1978. She was promoted to full professor in 1997.

Professor Skurka is a graduate of the University of Illinois. She holds a master’s degree in education from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.

Deborah Jenson, a professor of Romance studies at Duke University, will take on the additional responsibility of the director of the Franklin Humanities Institute. She has been on the Duke faculty since 2008.

Professor Jenson is the author of several books including Beyond the Slave Narrative: Politics, Sex, and Manuscripts in the Haitian Revolution (Liverpool University Press, 2011). She holds a Ph.D. in Romance languages and literatures from Harvard University.

Debi Switzer was named interim chair of the department of education and human development at Clemson University in South Carolina. Professor Switzer joined the Clemson faculty in 1990 and was promoted to full professor in 2004.

Professor Switzer holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in educational psychology from the University of Illinois.

Cynthia Ward was appointed a Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Georgia. She is a professor of small animal internal medicine in the College of Veterinary Medicine. Professor Ward has been on the faculty at the University of Georgia for the past decade.

Professor Ward holds a doctorate in veterinary medicine and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Lauren Caldwell was promoted to associate professor of classical studies at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. She was also granted tenure. Dr. Caldwell is the author of Roman Girlhood and the Fashioning of Femininity (Cambridge University Press, 2014).

Dr. Caldwell is a graduate of Princeton University in New Jersey. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.