Seven Women Leaving Their Positions at Major Universities

Marilynne Robinson, the F. Wendell Miller Professor of Creative Writing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, has announced that she is retiring. She has taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop for 25 years. Professor Robinson was recently selected to receive the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. A year ago, Professor Robinson won the National Book Critics Circle Award in the fiction category for her novel Lila (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2014).

Professor Robinson is a native of Idaho. She is a magna cum laude graduate of Brown University and holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Washington. She has served on the faculty at the University of Iowa since 1991.

Julie Smart, professor of special education and rehabilitation at Utah State University, has announced her retirement at the end of the academic year. Professor Smart joined the faculty at Utah State in 1992. She was promoted and awarded tenure in 1998 and became a full professor in 2001.

Dr. Smart holds bachelor’s and master’s degree from the University of Utah. She earned a Ph.D. in rehabilitation counseling from the University of Northern Colorado.

Ellen Waite-Franzen, vice president for information technology and chief information officer at Dartmouth College has announced her retirement. She has led the college’s information technology services division for the past decade.

Before joining the administration at Dartmouth College, Waite-Franzen was vice president for computing and information services at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Earlier, she was chief information officer at the University of Richmond in Virginia.

Terry Tempest Williams is stepping down from her post as the Annie Clark Tanner Scholar in Environmental Humanities at the University of Utah. According to published reports, Professor Williams was unhappy over contract negotiations with the university.

Professor Williams is the author of several books including Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place (Vintage, 1992) and When Women Were Birds (Sarah Crichton Books, 2012).

Ursula Shepherd, longtime professor of interdisciplinary studies and associate dean of the Honors College at the University of New Mexico, is retiring after a career of nearly 20 years at the educational institution.

Dr. Shepherd earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. After working in Silicon Valley for many years, she returned to academia and earned a Ph.D. in ecology and biogeography.

Cynthia Kabat King, executive director of the Academic Advancement Center at Ohio University in Athens, is retiring. She joined the staff at the university in 1999 as the coordinator of the College Adjustment Program. She was promoted to director of the Academic Advancement Center in 2003.

King holds a master’s degree in vocational rehabilitation counseling from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Omofolabo Ajayi-Soyinka, professor of theatre and professor of women, gender, and sexuality studies at the University of Kansas, is retiring after 25 years on the faculty. She is the author of Yoruba Dance : The Semiotics of Movement and Body Attitude in a Nigerian Culture (Africa World Press, 1997).

Dr. Ajayi-Soyinka holds a Ph.D. from the University of Ife in Nigeria. She is past president of the African Literature Association.