Two Women Appointed to New Endowed Chairs at Western Universities

Yishi Jin is the inaugural holder of the Junior Seau Foundation Endowed Chair in Traumatic Brain Injury at the University of California, San Diego. The chair is named for Junior Seau, a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame who committed suicide in 2012. He suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a neurodegenerative disease associated with repeated blows to the head.

Dr. Jin is a professor of neurobiology and chair of the Division of Biological Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. She earned a bachelor’s degree at Peking University in China and holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Beth Plummer is the inaugural Susan C. Karant-Nunn Professor of Reformation and Early Modern European History at the University of Arizona. She is an expert on the Reformation and Martin Luther. Dr. Plummer is the author of From Priest’s Whore to Pastor’s Wife: Clerical Marriage and the Process of Reform in the Early German Reformation (Routledge, 2017). Professor Plummer previously taught at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green.

Professor Plummer is a graduate of the University of Rochester in New York, Where she majored in English and history. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in European history from the University of Virginia.