New Roles for Nine Women Faculty Members in Higher Education

Sheila Kennedy was appointed professor in the department of architecture in the School of Architecture and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is the co-founder of the KVA Matx architectural firm.

Professor Kennedy is a graduate of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, where she majored in history, philosophy, and literature. She holds a master of architecture degree from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University.

Frances Lefcort was named a Letters and Science Distinguished Professor at Montana State University, the highest faculty honor at the university’s College of Letters and Science. She is a professor in the department of cell biology and neuroscience.

Professor Lefcort joined the faculty at Montana State University in 1994. She holds a Ph.D. in neurobiology from the University of California, Berkeley.

Annette Medina-Walpole, a professor of medicine at the University of Rochester in New York, was named chief of the Division of Geriatrics and Aging at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

Dr. Medina-Walpole earned her medical degree at the University of Chicago. She completed her residency in internal medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Heewon Chae is a new assistant professor of management at the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. Her research focuses on strategy, organizational theory, and international business.

Dr. Chae is a summa cum laude graduate of Seoul National University in South Korea. She holds a Ph.D. in strategy from the School of Business at the University of Michigan.

Jennifer Francis, the Douglas and Josie Breeden Doctoral Professor of accounting in the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, has been given the added responsibilities as vice provost for academic affairs at the university. Professor Francis has been on the faculty at Duke since 1987 and was promoted to full professor in 1999.

Dr. Francis is a graduate of Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, where she majored in accounting. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Cornell University.

Amy Ralston is the inaugural James R. Billman Jr., M.D. Endowed Professor in the College of Natural Science at Michigan State University. She has been serving as an associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology.

Dr. Ralston is a graduate of Oberlin College in Ohio, where she majored in biochemistry. She holds a Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Kali Gross is a new  professor of African American studies at Wesleyan University. She is the first professor in the new department of African American studies. Professor Gross is the author of Colored Amazons: Crime, Violence, and Black Women in the City of Brotherly Love, 1880-1910 (Duke University Press, 2006) and Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso: A Tale of Race, Sex , and Violence in America (Oxford University Press, 2016).

Professor Gross is a graduate of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. She earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Sowjanya Gollapinni was hired as an assistant professor of physics at the University of Tennessee. She has been conducting postdoctoral research in neutrinos at Kansas State University.

Dr. Gollapinni earned a master’s degree from the University of Hyderabad in India. She holds a second master’s degree and a Ph.D. in physics from Wayne State University in Detroit.

Stacey Katz Bourns is a new professor of cultures, societies and global studies and the director of the World Languages Center at Northeastern University in Boston. Since 2009, she was director of language programs in the department of Romance languages and literatures at Harvard University.

Dr. Bourns is a graduate of Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. She holds a master’s degree in French literature from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. in French lnguistics from the University of Texas at Austin.