New Women Deans Announced at Six Universities

Monica Ponce de Leon was named as the next dean of the School of Architecture at Princeton University in New Jersey. Since 2008, she has served as dean of the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan, where she also is the Eliel Saarinen Collegiate Professor of Architecture and Urban Planning. Earlier, for 12 years she was a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Professor Ponce de Leon will begin her duties at Princeton on January 1.

Professor Ponce de Leon is a graduate of the University of Miami in Florida. She earned a master’s degree in architecture and urban design from Harvard University.

Adele Lindenmeyr is the new dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. She has served as interim dean since June 2014. Dr. Lindenmeyr is a professor history at the university and focuses on modern Russian history and culture. She is the author of Poverty is Not a Vice: Charity, Society and the State in Imperial Russia (Princeton University Press, 1996).

Professor Lindenmeyr is a magna cum laude graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. She holds a Ph.D. in history from Princeton University.

Elizabeth Lehfeldt was appointed the inaugural dean of the Joseph and Morton Mandel Honors College at Cleveland State University in Ohio. From 2009 to 2014, Dr. Lehfeldt served as chair of the department of history at the university. She joined the university’s faculty in 1995.

Professor Lehfeldt is a graduate of Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. She earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. at Indiana University.

Diana Hess was appointed dean of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has been serving as senior vice president at the Spencer Foundation in Chicago. She is also a professor in the department of curriculum and instruction in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin.

Dr. Hess joined the faculty at the university in 1999. She is a graduate of Western Illinois University in Macomb and holds a master’s degree from the University of Illinois and a Ph.D. from the University of Washington.

Maureen Ryan was named interim dean of the College of Arts and Letters at the University of Southern Mississippi. Dr. Ryan joined the faculty at the university in 1983 as an assistant professor of English. She is the author of The Other Side of Grief: The Home Front and the Aftermath in American Narratives of the Vietnam War (University of Massachusetts Press, 2008).

Professor Ryan is a graduate of Pennsylvania State University. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Temple University in Philadelphia.

Michelle Massé has been named dean of the Graduate School at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. She is a professor and director of graduate studies in the department of English at the university. She joined the faculty at LSU in 1985. Professor Massé is the author of In the Name of Love: Women, Masochism, and the Gothic (Cornell University Press, 1992).

Dr. Massé is a graduate of Anna Maria College in Paxton, Massachusetts. She holds a Ph.D. in English from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.