Two Women Scholars Named to Endowed Chairs at Major Universities

Magdalena Bezanilla was appointed the Ernest Everett Just 1907 Professor in the department of biological sciences at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. She has been serving as a professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Her research is focused on the process of cell growth.

Dr. Bezanilla is a graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara. She earned a Ph.D. at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. Dr. Bezanilla conducted postdoctoral research at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego and Washington University in St. Louis.

Alma Rachel Heckman was appointed to the Neufeld-Levin Holocaust Endowed Chair at the University of California, Santa Cruz. An expert on the modern history of Jewish people in North Africa, Dr. Heckman is working on a book project entitled, Radical Roads Not Taken: Moroccan Jewish Communists, 1925-1975.

Dr. Heckman is a graduate of Wellesley College in Massachusetts, where she double majored in French and Middle Eastern studies. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Los Angeles.