Two Women Scholars Named to Positions as Deans

Carla Jackson Bell has been selected as the next dean of the Robert R. Taylor School of Architecture and Construction Science in the New Millennium at Tuskegee University in Alabama. She will begin her new duties on January 5.

Since 2006, Dr. Jackson has served on the faculty and has been director of multicultural affairs in the College of Architecture, Design, and Construction at Auburn University in Alabama. She is one of only 12 African American women nationwide who hold a tenured faculty position in architecture. Dr. Jackson taught at Tuskegee University from 1993 to 2006.

Dr. Jackson is the author of Space Unveiled: Invisible Cultures in the Design Studio (Routledge, 2014). She is a 1991 graduate of Tuskegee University. Dr. Jackson earned a master of fine arts degree in interior design at the Savannah College of Art & Design in Georgia, and a Ph.D. in architecture education from the Union Institute and University in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Dani Byrd was named interim dean of the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts & Sciences at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. She has served as vice dean for more than eight years and has been on the faculty at the university of 17 years.

Dr. Byrd is the founder of the Phonetics Laboratory at the University of Southern California. Her research focuses on human speech production and she uses technology to track and image the working of the throat and mouth during human speech. She is the co-author of Discovering Speech, Words, and Mind (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010).

Dr. Byrd  holds a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in linguistics from Yale University. She earned a Ph.D. in linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles.