New Roles for Seven Women Faculty Members at Major Colleges and Universities

Tomoko Sakomura was named the next associate dean of academic affairs at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. She will take on this new duty on August 1. Dr. Sakomura joined the Swarthmore College faculty in 2005 as an associate professor of art history. She is the author of Poetry as Image: The Visual Culture of Waka in Sixteenth-Century Japan (Brill, 2015).

Dr. Sakomura holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in art history from Columbia University.

Aimee Bender was named a Distinguished Professor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. She is a professor of English and director of the Ph.D. program in creative writing and literature in the university’s College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. She is the author of several novels and short stories collections including The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (Anchor Press, 2011).

Professor Bender is a graduate of the University of California, San Diego and holds a master of fine arts degree in creating writing from the University of California, Irvine.

Anne C. Stone was named a Regents Professor at Arizona State University. She is a professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change. Professor Stone’s research is focused on anthropological genetics. She joined the faculty at Arizona State in 2003 after teaching at the University of New Mexico.

Dr. Stone is a graduate of the University of Virginia, where she majored in archaeology and biology. She earned a Ph.D. in anthropology from Pennsylvania State University.

Ann-Catherine Sullivan was named chair of the department of health, physical education, and exercise science at Norfolk State University in Virginia. She is a former professor of physical education at Otterbein College in Westerville, Ohio. Earlier, she was a professor at Saginaw State University in Michigan.

Dr. Sullivan is a graduate of St. Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Ohio State University.

Canan Dagdeviren is a new assistant professor of media arts and sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is also head of the Conformable Decoders research group, which seeks to convert the patterns of nature and the human body into beneficial signals and energy.

A native of Istanbul, Turkey, Dr. Dagdeviren holds a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from the University of Illinois.

Lori Rolando, an assistant professor of clinical medicine at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center and assistant medical director of the Occupational Health Clinic, was named director of Occupational Heath at the medical center.

Dr. Rolando joined the faculty at Vanderbilt in 2008. She earned her medical degree at the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine.

Raina Merchant, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, has been given the additional duties as associate vice president for the University of Pennsylvania Health System and director of the university’s Center for Digital Health.

Dr. Merchant is a graduate of Yale University, where she majored in psychobiology. She holds a master’s degree in health policy research from the University of Pennsylvania and a medical doctorate from the University of Chicago.