Four Scholars at Major Universities Taking on New Assignments

Paula Pietromonaco, professor of psychology and director of the Close Relationships, Emotion and Health Laboratory at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, was named editor-in-chief of the journal Emotion, a publication of the American Psychological Association.

Dr. Pietromonaco also serves as associate editor of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. She is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.

Erica Kohl-Arenas was named an associate professor of American studies at the University of California, Davis. She will also serve as director of Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life, a consortium of more than 100 academic institutions that will move its headquarters to the University of California, Davis. Dr. Kohl-Arenas has been serving on the faculty at The New School in New York City.

Dr. Kohl-Arenas is a graduate of Reed College in Portland, Oregon. She holds a master’s degree in community development from the University of California, Davis and a doctorate in social and cultural studies in education from the University of California, Berkeley.

Melissa Ianetta was appointed to the Unidel Andrew N. Kirkpatrick Jr. Chair of Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Delaware. She has led the University Writing Centers since 2005 and served as director of the composition program in the department of English from 2005 to 2014. She is the co-author of The Oxford Guide for Writing Tutors: Practice and Research (Oxford University Press, 2016).

Professor Ianetta holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts. She earned a Ph.D. at Ohio State University.

Zina Jarrahi Cinker, a visiting scientist in the department of physics and astronomy at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, was named executive director of the new National Graphene Association. Graphene, discovered in 2004, is honeycombed sheets of carbon which are only one atom thick. It is lightweight, strong, and a great conductor of heat and electricity with a huge number of applications for energy storage and electronics.

Dr Cinker holds a Ph.D. in condensed matter and ultrafast physics from Vanderbilt University.