Nine Women Faculty Members Taking on New Assignments at Colleges and Universities

Catherine Knight Steele is a new assistant professor of communication at the University of Maryland, College Park. She will also serve as the inaugural director of the Synergies Among Digital Humanities and African American History and Culture initiative at the university. She was an assistant professor of journalism and media at Colorado State University.

Dr. Steele is a graduate of the University of Illinois. She holds a master’s degree in multicultural communication from DePaul University in Chicago and a Ph.D. in communication from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Kerstin Perez is a new assistant professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was an assistant professor of physics at Haverford College in Pennsylvania.

Dr. Perez is a graduate of Columbia University in New York City, where she majored in physics. She holds a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology.

Michele Foster was appointed to the Henry Heuser Jr. Endowed Chair for Urban Education Partnerships at the University of Louisville. She had held the Sherman Family Endowed Chair in Urban Education Research and was the executive director of the Urban Education Research Center at University of Missouri, Kansas City.

Dr. Foster holds master’s and doctoral degrees from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education.

Mikaella Polyviou is a new assistant professor of supply chain management at the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. Her research focuses on supply chain disruptions and organizational resilience.

Dr. Polyviou earned master’s and doctoral degrees at Ohio State University.

Michelle A. Marks, a faculty member in the School of Management at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, was named vice president of the Office of Academic Innovation and New Ventures. For the past four years, she has served as vice provost for academic affairs at the university.

Dr. Marks is a graduate of James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in industrial organizational psychology from George Mason University.

Jill Kolesar, a clinical pharmacologist, has joined the faculty of the College of Pharmacy at the University of Kentucky. She will also serve as co-director of the Molecular Tumor Board of the university’s Markey Cancer Center. Dr. Kolesar previously served on the faculty at the University of Wisconsin Carbone Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Dr. Kolesar is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin. She earned a pharmacy doctorate at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio.

Jodie Holt, professor emerita of plant physiology at the University of California, Riverside, was appointed director of the University of California, Riverside Botanic Gardens. Dr. Holt joined the faculty at the university in 1982. In 2007, she served as a botany consultant for James Cameron’s blockbuster movie Avatar.

Dr. Holt earned a Ph.D. in 1982 at the University of California, Davis.

La Tanya Hall is the first teacher in jazz vocal studies in the 43-year history of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio. Her debut recording “It’s About Time” was released in 2008. Previously, she has taught at the New School in New York City and Five Towns College on Long Island.

Hall began singing professionally when she was 13 years old. She toured with Harry Belafonte and Diana Ross.

Erin Hotchkiss was hired as an assistant professor in the department of biological sciences at Virginia Tech.  Since completing her Ph.D. in 2013, Dr. Hotchkiss has conducted postdoctoral research at Umeå University in Sweden and the University of Quebec in Canada.

Dr. Hotchkiss is a graduate of Emory University in Atlanta, where she majored in environmental studies. She holds a master’s degree in zoology and a Ph.D. in ecology from the University of Wyoming.