Six Women Scholars Taking on New Faculty Assignments in Higher Education

Earlise C. Ward, an associate professor in the School of Nursing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will be the next director of the Morgridge Center for Public Service. The center serves to connect students, faculty, and staff to the global community through service and learning. Dr. Ward will begin her new role in January.

Dr. Ward is a graduate of Baruch College of the City University of New York, where she majored in international marketing. She holds a master’s degree in guidance and counseling from Brooklyn College and a Ph.D. in counseling psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Laura Lewis was elevated to the rank of University Distinguished Professor at Northeastern University in Boston. Dr. Lewis joined the faculty at the university in 2007 as chair of the department of chemical engineering. Her research focuses on magnetic materials.

Professor Lewis is a graduate of the University of California, San Diego, where she majored in physics. She holds a master’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.

Ellen McClure, an associate professor of French and history at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has been appointed director of the Engaged Humanities Initiative. The program allows students to take classes and conduct research that connects humanities scholarship with the social world beyond the university. Professor McClure is the author of Sunspots and the Sun King: Sovereignty and Meditation in Seventeenth-Century France (University of Illinois Press, 2006).

Dr. McClure is a graduate of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, where she majored in French. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of Michigan.

Caroline Stinson was appointed associate professor of the practice of music at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. She will also be the cellist for the university’s Ciompi Quartet. She has been teaching at The Julliard School in New York City.

A native of Edmonton, Alberta, Stinson studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music and holds a master’s degree from The Julliard School.

Beth Quitslund, an associate professor of English at Ohio University, has been given the added duties as interim associate dean of the Graduate College at the university. Dr. Quitslund joined the faculty at Ohio University in 2001.

Dr. Quitslund is a graduate of Harvard University and earned a Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley.

Katherine McComas, a professor of communications at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, was named vice provost for engagement and land grant affairs at the university. From 2013 to 2017, she chaired the department of communications at Cornell.

Professor McComas is a graduate of the University of Missouri, where she majored in French and advertising. She earned a master’s degree in international relations and communications from Boston University and a Ph.D. in communications at Cornell University.