New Duties for Six Women Faculty Members at Major Universities

Lourdes Estrada, an assistant professor of cancer biology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, was given the added duties as director of academic programs and operations for the Medical Scientist Training Program. Dr. Estrada came to Vanderbilt in 2004 as a scientific and education coordinator for the Center for Cancer Systems Biology.

Dr. Estrada is a graduate of the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras. She earned a Ph.D. in pharmacology at the University of Michigan.

Cathryn R. Newton, professor of earth sciences at Syracuse University in New York, was named special advisor to the chancellor and provost for faculty engagement at the university. She is the former dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the university.

Professor Newton is a magna cum laude graduate of Duke University, where she majored in geology. She holds a master’s degree in geology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Ph.D. in earth sciences from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Amanda Bailey was appointed chair of the department of English in the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Maryland at College Park. She joined the faculty at the university in 2012 after teaching tat the University of Connecticut.

Professor Bailey os the author of Of Bondage: Debt, Property, and Personhood in Early Modern England (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). She holds a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Michigan.

Catherine Larochelle is a new assistant professor of agricultural and applied economics at Virginia Tech. Her research focuses on poverty, food security and nutrition.

Dr. Larochelle is a graduate of Laval University in France. She earned a master’s degree in resource economics and policy at the University of Maine and a Ph.D. in agricultural and applied economics from Virginia Tech.

Keisha Bentley-Edwards was appointed an assistant professor of general internal medicine in the School of Medicine at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. She will also direct the Health Equity Working Group in the university’s Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity. Dr. Bentley-Edwards previously served on the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin.

Dr. Bentley-Edwards is a graduate of Howard University and holds a master’s degree from Columbia University and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Kim Fridkin was named a Foundation Professor at Arizona State University. She has served on the university’s faculty since 1989. She is the co-author of The Changing Face of Representation: The Gender of U.S. Senators and Constituent Communications (University of Michigan Press, 2014).

Professor Fridkin holds bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees, all from the University of Michigan.