Four Women Scholars Named to Provost Positions at Prestigious Colleges and Universities

Emily A. Carter has been named executive vice chancellor and provost of the University of California, Los Angeles. She currently serves as dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment, and professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and applied and computational mathematics at Princeton University in New Jersey. Before joining the Princeton faculty in 2004, she served as a UCLA faculty member for 16 years. She will return to UCLA and assume her new duties as the campus’ chief operating and academic officer on September 1, 2019.

Dr. Carter is a high honors graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, where she majored in chemistry. She holds a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the California Institute of Technology.

Mitzi Montoya has been named provost and executive vice president at Washington State University. Currently, she serves as the Sara Hunt Kimball Dean of the College of Business at Oregon State University. She is also executive dean of the business and engineering division, the senior administrator for the university’s Portland operations, and a professor in the College of Business. Her research, teaching, and industry expertise focuses on innovation process and strategy.

Dr. Montoya holds a bachelor’s degree in applied engineering and science and a Ph.D. in marketing and statistics both from Michigan State University.

Linda Strong-Leak was appointed provost at Berea College in Kentucky, effective July 1. She currently serves as vice president for diversity and inclusion, associate vice president for academic affairs, and professor of women’s and gender studies at the college. Dr. Strong-Leak joined the faculty at the college in 2002. Earlier, she served on the faculty at Florida International University in Miami. Her current research is focused on the novels of Caribbean women writers.

Professor Strong-Leak earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English from North Carolina Central University in Durham. She holds a Ph.D. in English with a concentration in African American literature from Michigan State University.

Julie Sandell will be the next provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at Suffolk University in Boston. She has been serving for the past year as senior associate provost at Boston University. Dr. Sandell, a retinal neuroanatomist, joined the faculty at Boston University in 1991 as a professor of anatomy and microbiology in the university’s School of Medicine.

Professor Sandell is a summa cum laude graduate of Princeton University in New Jersey, where she majored in psychology. She earned a Ph.D. in neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.