Ten Women in Academia Who Will Be Taking on New Administrative Positions

Lori Rava Dennison was named vice president for advancement at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. She has been serving as interim vice president for communications and development at the college. She has been on the staff at the college for 30 years.

Dennison is a 1987 graduate of Hamilton College and after graduation joined the staff as assistant director of Graduate of the Last Decade (GOLD) program in the advancement office.

Jessica Evans was appointed assistant director of assessment and academic program review at Murray State University in Kentucky. She has been serving as coordinator of institutional assessment and lecturer of communication. Evans joined Murray State in 2010.

Evans holds a master’s degree in human development and leadership in addition to a master’s in organizational communication, both from Murray State University. She is pursuing a doctorate in educational psychology and technology from the Chicago School of Professional Psychology.

Jacqueline Jackson was named vice president for student affairs and institutional effectiveness at Harford Community College in Bel Air, Maryland. She has been serving as dean of student services at Anne Arundel Community College in Arnold, Maryland.

Dr. Jackson holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s degree in college student personnel and counseling from Western Illinois University. She earned a Ph.D. in urban education from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.

Katy Nelson-Ginder was promoted to associate vice chancellor for university development at the University of Arkansas. She has been serving as assistant vice chancellor for university development. Earlier, she was senior director of development for the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the university.

Nelson-Ginder holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in communications from the University of Arkansas.

Kirstin Boswell-Ford was named director of religious life and chaplain at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is the second person and the first woman to hold the post of chaplain at MIT. Rev. Boswell-Ford was associate university chaplain to the protestant community at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

Dr. Boswell-Ford is a graduate of the University of Virginia, where she majored in government and community affairs. She earned a master of divinity degree and a Ph.D. in sociology and anthropology at the University of Chicago.

Mary Statzer is the new curator of prints and photographs at the University of New Mexico Art Museum. For the past seven years, she has been a curatorial assistant in the departments of Latin American and modern and contemporary art at the Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona.

Dr. Statzer is the editor of The Photographic Object 1970 (University of California Press, 2016). She is a graduate of Illinois State University and holds a master of fine arts degree in printmaking from Arizona State University and a Ph.D. in the history and theory of art from the University of Arizona.

Teresa L. Smallwood was appointed associate director of the Public Theology and Racial Justice Collaborative at Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville, Tennessee. She practiced law in North Carolina and then served on the ministerial staff at Israel Baptist Church in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Smallwood is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the North Carolina Central University Law School. She earned a master of divinity degree at Howard University in Washington, D.C., and a doctorate from the Chicago Theological Seminary.

Carolyn M. Larrabee was named director of the Student Legal Services Office at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Since 2014, Larrabee has been an attorney for Fairfax County public schools in Virginia. Earlier, she was director of student legal services at Pennsylvania State University.

Larrabee is a graduate of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. She earn a law degree at Pennsylvania State University.

Jacqueline Lewis was appointed vice president of university relations at the University of Maryland, College Park, effective August 28. She has been serving as senior vice president for development fro the University of Iowa Foundation.

Lewis holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and mass communications from Iowa State University.

Sharon Taylor Burnett was named chief financial officer at Tuskegee University in Alabama. Since 2014, she has been vice president for fiscal and administrative affairs at Langston University in Oklahoma.

Dr. Burnett is a graduate of Lane College in Jackson, Tennessee, where she majored in business administration. She holds an MBA from the University of Tennessee at Martin and an educational doctorate from the University of Memphis.

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