Seven Women Taking on New Administrative Roles in Higher Education

Kimberly A. Saunders was appointed executive director of TRIO Pre-College and Student Success Programs at the University of Delaware. She was serving as director of the Ronald E. McNair Scholars Program and the University Undergraduate Scholars Program at the university. Before joining the university’s staff in 2011, Dr. Saunders was director of student diversity at the School of Public Health of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Dr. Saunders is a graduate of the University of Delaware. She holds a master’s degree in counseling and college student personnel from Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania and a doctorate in higher education administration from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

Jill Ashton was named director of development for the College of Liberal Arts and Human Science at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg. She was director of major gifts for the Smeal College of Business at Pennsylvania State University.

Earlier in her career. Ashton served for seven years as a development officer for Florida State University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and art history.

Rebecca Brodigan is the new director of institutional research at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. She was vice president for institutional planning and assessment at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine.

Brodigan is a graduate of the University of Maine and holds a master of public administration degree from George Washington University in the nation’s capital.

Joyce Jacobsen, the Andrews Professor of Economics, dean of social sciences, and director of global initiatives at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, was appointed interim provost and vice president for academic affairs at the university. She will serve as interim provost for a one-year term.

Dr. Jacobsen joined the Wesleyan faculty in 1993. She is a graduate of Harvard University and holds a master’s degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University.

Teresa Gould was named interim director of athletics at the University of California, Davis. She has been serving as associate executive director of the Cal Aggie Alumni Association at the university. Before joining the university staff in 2014, Gould was deputy director of athletics at the University of California, Berkeley.

Gould is a graduate of Iowa State University.

Regina Lawrence is the new director of the George S. Turnbull Portland Center of the University of Oregon School of Journalism. She was the director of the Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life and held an endowed chair in journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Lawrence is the coauthor of Hillary Clinton’s Race for the White House: Gender Politics and the Media on the Campaign Trail (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2009).

Dr. Lawrence is a graduate of Metropolitan State University in Denver. She holds a master’s degree from the University of Colorado at Denver and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Washington.

Catherine Panter-Brick, professor of anthropology and professor of health and global affairs at Yale University, was named master of Morse College on the Yale campus. She will serve a five-year term as head of the residential college.

Dr. Panter-Brick holds two master’s degrees and a Ph.D. from the University of Oxford in England.