New Roles in Higher Education for Eight Women Faculty Members

Mira Frick is a new assistant professor of economics at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. For the past two years she has been conducting postdoctoral research at Yale. Dr. Frick is a microeconomic theorist interested in game theory, information economics, and behavioral economics.

A native of Germany, Dr. Frick holds master’s degrees from the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris and Oxford University in England. She earned a Ph.D. in business economics from Harvard University.

Keija Hu was appointed assistant professor of operations management in the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.

Dr. Hu is a native og Shanghai, China. Earlier this year, she earned a Ph.D. in operations management from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Rashida Atkins is a new assistant professor of nursing at the Camden campus of Rutgers University in New Jersey. Her research focuses on the relationship between depression and physical activity in disadvantaged mothers.

Dr. Atkins was valedictorian of her high school class. She went on to earn a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree, and a Ph.D. in nursing from Rutgers University.

Stephanie A. Miner, who is about to complete her term as mayor of Syracuse, New York, will become a the Visiting Distinguished Urbanist at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University. She elected mayor of Syracuse in 2009.

Mayor Miner is a magna cum laude graduate of Syracuse University, where she majored  in political science and journalism. She earned a juris doctorate of the University at Buffalo of the State University of New York System.

Sherilynn Black, an assistant professor of the practice of medical education and the director of the Office of Biomedical Graduate Diversity at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, has been given the added duties of associate vice provost for faculty development. Dr. Black joined the Duke faculty in 2012.

Dr. Black is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she majored in psychology and biology. She holds a Ph.D. in neurobiology from Duke University.

Trudy Mackay was appointed Provost’s Distinguished Professor and director of the Center for Human Genetics at Clemson University in South Carolina. She has been serving as a Distinguished University Professor and has held the Goodnight Innovation Distinguished Chair of Biological Science at North Carolina State University.

Professor Mackay holds a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in biology from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She earned a Ph.D. at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

Barbara Zecchi, professor of Spanish and Portuguese studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, was named director of the interdepartmental program in film studies at the university.

Professor Zecchi joined the faculty at the university in 2005 and was promoted to full professor in 2015. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Alison Van Nyhuis, an associate professor of English at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina, was given the added duties as chair of the university’s Graduate Council.

Dr. Van Nyhuis joined the faculty at the university in 2008. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Florida.