New Administrative Assignments for 10 Women in Higher Education

Tia Minnis is the new associate provost for academic affairs at Virginia State University. She had been serving as executive director of assessment and effectiveness at Clark Atlanta University.

Dr. Minnis is a graduate of Savannah State University in Georgia, where she majored in business administration and computer information systems. She holds an MBA and a master’s degree in technology from Georgia Southern University and a doctorate in educational leadership from Clark Atlanta University.

Danielle Stillman was named associate chaplain at Middlebury College in Vermont. For the past three years she has served as director of Jewish Life and associate chaplain at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Earlier, she was campus rabbi at Ursinus College in Collegetown, Pennsylvania.

Rabbi Stillman is a graduate of Oberlin College in Ohio and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Wyncote, Pennsylvania. She holds a master’s degree in theological studies from Harvard Divinity School.

Mireille Grangenois was appointed interim general manager of WEAA-FM radio in Baltimore, a National Public Radio station operated by Morgan State University. She is the former publisher of the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Grangenois is a graduate of New York University, where she majored in journalism and history.

Lauren Loeffler was named vice president for workforce development and community education at Northampton Community College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She has been serving as executive director of workforce development at Bucks County Community College in Newton, Pennsylvania.

Loeffler is a graduate of Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where she majored in sociology. She holds a master’s degree in professional communication from Thomas Edison State University in Trenton, New Jersey.

Sughra Ahmed was appointed associate dean for religious life at Stanford University in California. She has been serving as a Greenberg World Fellow at Yale University. Ahmed is the former president of the Islamic Society of Britain.

Ahmed is a graduate of Birmingham City University, where she majored in English language and literature. She holds a master’s degree in Islamic studies from Loughborough University.

Taimi Olsen was named director of the Office of Teaching Effectiveness and Innovation at Clemson University in South Carolina. She has been serving as the director of the Teaching and Learning Center at the University of Tennessee.

Dr. Olsen is a graduate of Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in American and twentieth-century literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Elizabeth Johnson is the new director of annual giving for university development at the University of Arkansas. Since 2012, she has worked in the Office of External Relations for the university’s Sam M. Walton College of Business.

Johnson holds a bachelor’s degree in international relations and Latin American studies and a master’s degree in higher education administration from the University of Arkansas.

Larenda Mielke was named the inaugural associate provost for continuing education at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. She has been serving as senior director of executive education at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia.

Mielke is a graduate of Indiana State University. She holds a master’s degree in cross-cultural education from Wheaton College Graduate School and an executive MBA from Washington University in St. Louis.

Mary Beahm was appointed interim vice president for human resources at Pennsylvania State University. She has been serving as associate vice president for human resources. Beahm joined the staff at the university in 2008.

Beahm holds a bachelor’s degree in human development, individual, and family studies and an MBA from Pennsylvania State University.

Frances Conine was appointed interim vice president for the student experience at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana. For the past four years, she has been dean of students at the university and will continue in that role. She has been on the staff at the university since 1981.

Conine is a graduate of Auburn University in Alabama, where she majored in sociology. She holds a master’s degree in education from Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi.