Nine Women Faculty Members Taking on New Assignments

Amy Simon was named the inaugural holder of the William and Audrey Farber Family Chair in Holocaust Studies and European Jewish History at Michigan State University. Dr. Simon has served as a researcher at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. She has taught history and Jewish studies at the University of Maryland.

Dr. Simon holds a Ph.D. in history from Indiana University in Bloomington.

Miranda S. Spivack was appointed the Eugene S. Pulliam Distinguished Visiting Professor of Journalism at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. From 2004 to 2013, Spivack was reporter for The Washington Post. She has been working on a journalism project about state and local government transparency.

Spivack is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and holds a master’s degree from Yale Law School.

Jean Lee Cole, associate professor of English at Loyola University in Maryland, has been given the added duties as faculty director of community-engaged learning and scholarship. In this role, she will help faculty enact initiatives to connect community needs with academic endeavors beneficial to all.

Dr. Cole joined the faculty in 2001. She is the past president of the Research Society for American Periodicals. Dr. Cole is a graduate of Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Texas.

Martine Guyot-Bender was named the Margaret Bundy Scott Professor of French at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. An expert in 20th-century French studies, Dr. Guyot-Bender is the co-editor of Paradigms of Memory: The Occupation and Other Hi/stories in the Novels of Patrick Modiano (Peter Lang Publishers, 1998).

Lesley Cottrell, a professor of pediatrics at the West Virginia University School of Medicine, has been given the added duties of director of the university’s Center for Excellence in Disabilities. She has served as interim director for the past year.

Dr. Cottrell holds a Ph.D. in developmental psychology from West Virginia University.

Mary McKernan McKay was named a full professor of social work at the Brown School of Washington University in St. Louis. Since 2011, she has served as the McSilver Professor of Poverty Studies at New York University. Earlier she taught at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

Professor McKay holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in social work from Loyola University in Chicago. She earned a Ph.D. in social work from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Gena Flynn is the new director of the Center for Black Studies at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. She was director of academic support at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. From 2007 to 2014, Dr. Flynn served on the staff at Columbia College in Chicago.

Dr. Flynn is a graduate of DePaul University in Chicago, where she majored in African American studies and political science. She holds a master’s degree in political science from the University of Michigan and an educational doctorate from Vanderbilt University.

Yvette Richardson, professor of meteorology and atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University, was given the added duties as associate dean for undergraduate education for the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. She joined the faculty at Penn State in 2002.

Dr. Richardson earned a master’s degree and a doctorate in meteorology from the University of Oklahoma, where her research focused on tornadoes and other severe weather.

Alethia Cook, an associate professor and director of the security studies program, has been appointed chair of the department of political science at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. She joined the faculty at the university in 2007.

Dr. Cook is the author of several books including Emergency Response to Domestic Terrorism: How Bureaucracies Reacted to the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing (Bloomsbury Academic, 2009). She holds a Ph.D. from Kent State University.