Jean Folkerts, dean emerita of the School of Media and Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a visiting professor at Kansas State University, has been selected to receive the 2016 Sidney Kobre Award for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism History from the American Journalism Historians Association. She will be honored at the association’s annual meeting in October.
Professor Folkerts is the co-author of the textbook Voices of a Nation: A History of Mass Media in the United States (Pearson, 2008, 5th edition). Dr. Folkerts holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Kansas State University. She earned a second master’s degree and a Ph.D. in American studies from the University of Kansas.
Joanne Yestramski, vice chancellor for finance and operations at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, is the recipient of a 2016 Distinguished Business Officer Award, the highest distinction bestowed by the National Association of College and University Business Officers. Prior to joining the UMass-Lowell staff in 2008, Yestramski was the chief financial officer and treasurer of the University of Maine System.
Yestramski is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, where she majored in business administration. She holds an MBA from Texas A&M University.
Rashida Khakoo, professor of medicine at the West Virginia University School of Medicine, has been selected to receive the 2016 Clinical Teacher Award from the Infectious Diseases Society of America. She will be honored at the society’s annual conference in New Orleans this October.
Dr. Khakoo earned her medical degree at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda.
Roshni Kulkarni, professor emerita of pediatrics and human development and director of the Center for Bleeding and Clotting Disorders in the College of Human Medicine at Michigan State University, is the recipient of the My Life, Our Future Champion Award from the World Federation of Hemophilia Congress.
Dr. Kulkarni received her medical degree from Osmania Medical College of the Indian Institute of Medical Sciences in Hyderabad, India. She completed a residency in pediatrics at the Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit.
Angela Flournoy has been selected as the winner of the 2016 Cabell First Novelist Award presented by Virginia Commonwealth University. She will be honored on November 17 in Richmond for her bookThe Turner House (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015). Flournoy has taught at the University of Iowa, The New School, and Columbia University.
Flournoy is a graduate of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and holds a master’s degree from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa.
Dr. Soufleris, a three-time alumna of the State University of New York System, has more than 35 years of higher education experience spanning student affairs, enrollment management, retention, and student success initiatives.
Most recently, Dr. Van Vlerah served as vice president for student success and institutional strategy at Manchester University in Indiana. She is slated to become the fifteenth president of Notre Dame of Maryland University on July 6.
Dr. Egan comes to her new role as president of Bennington College from Connecticut College, where she has been serving as the Fuller-Maathai Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Intersectionality Studies, dean of the faculty, and chief academic officer.
Dr. Pfluger has spent the past year as Bakersfield College's interim president. She previously served as vice chancellor of educational services and student success at the Kern Community College District.
Dr. Geneco comes to her new role from Tufts University in Massachusetts, where she has served as provost for the past four years. She is slated become the University at Buffalo's first woman president on August 10.