Six Women Scholars Appointed to Endowed Professorships

L. DeAne Lagerquist was named to the Harold H. Ditmanson Chair in Religion at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. She has served on the college’s faculty since 1988.

Professor Lagerquist is a graduate of California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks. She holds a master’s degree from Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, and a doctorate from the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Angela Banks was appointed the Charles J. Merriam Distinguished Professor of Law at Arizona State University. She was on the faculty of the William & Mary School of Law in Williamsburg, Virginia.

Professor Banks is a summa cum laude graduate of Spelman College in Atlanta, where she majored in sociology. As a Marshall Scholar, Professor Banks earned a master’s degree in sociology at the University of Oxford in England. She returned to the United States to graduate from Harvard Law School.

Shannon Monnat was named to the Lerner Chair for Public Health Promotion at Syracuse University in New York. She was an assistant professor or rural sociology and demography at Pennsylvania State University. Earlier, she taught at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Dr. Monnat earned a Ph.D. in sociology at the University at Albany of the State University of New York System.

Barbara Allen was named the James Woodward Strong Professor of Political Science at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. She first joined the faculty at Carleton in 1988. She was a contributing editor to the Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project at Stanford University.

Dr. Allen earned bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees, all from Indiana University.

Barbara Barnett is the inaugural Lee F. Young Professor of Journalism at the University of Kansas. Professor Barnett has taught at the University of Kansas for the past 14 years.

Professor Barnett is a graduate of what is now the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. She holds a master’s degree in literature and women’s studies from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Hong Liang was appointed the Oscar S. Wyatt Jr. Professor in the department of mechanical engineering at Texas A&M University. Her research focuses on surface science, tribology, and advanced materials and structures.

Dr. Liang holds a Ph.D. from the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey.