Eight Women Scholars Taking on New Roles in Higher Education

Carrie Byington was named professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco and executive vice president for the University of California Health system. In this role she will lead the five academic medical centers and 18 health professional schools across the university system. Dr. Byington has been serving as dean of the Texas A&M University College of Medicine and as the vice chancellor for health services and the senior vice president of the University Health Science Center.

Dr. Byington is a graduate of Texas A&M University, where she majored in biology. She earned her medical doctorate at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

Dara Walker is a new assistant professor of African American studies and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Pennsylvania State University. She has been conducting postdoctoral research at Penn State’s Africana Research Center.

Dr. Walker is a graduate of Eastern Michigan University where she majored in African American studies. She holds a master’s degree in Pan-African studies from Syracuse University in New York and a Ph.D. in history from Rutgers University in New Jersey.

Marianne Bronner has been named director of the Beckman Institute at the California Institute of Technology. She is the Albert Billings Ruddock Professor of Biology and Biological Engineering and has been a Caltech faculty member since 1996.

Dr. Bronner is a graduate of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. She holds a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Elizabeth Worthey has been named director of the Center for Genomic Data Science in the department of pediatrics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. In addition, she will serve as the director of the Bioinformatics Section in the Division of Genomics Diagnostics and Bioinformatics in the department of pathology and as the associate director for the Hugh Kaul Precision Medicine Institute.

Dr. Worthey holds a Ph.D. from the Imperial College London in England.

Katy Martin Rainey has been named director of the Soybean Center at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. A member of the Purdue faculty since 2012, she currently serves as an associate professor of agronomy.

Dr. Rainey is a graduate of the University of Georgia where she majored in botany. She holds a Ph.D. in plant breeding from Cornell University.

Rosslyn Biggs has been named director of continuing education and beef cattle extension specialist in the Center for Veterinary Health Sciences at Oklahoma State University. She has 14 years of veterinary experience, most recently serving as assistant veterinarian in charge at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service Veterinary Services in Oklahoma City.

Dr. Biggs holds a bachelor’s degree in agricultural economics and a doctor of veterinary medicine degree both from Oklahoma State University.

Madonna Harrington Meyer has been named a University Professor at Syracuse University. She is the Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professor of Teaching Excellence and a professor of sociology in the university’s Maxwell School. She is the author of Grandmothers at Work: Juggling Families and Jobs (New York University Press, 2014) and the co-author of Market Friendly or Family Friendly? The State and Gender Inequality in Old Age (Russell Sage Foundation, 2007).

Dr. Harrington Meyer holds a master’s degree in sociology from the University of Minnesota and a Ph.D. in sociology from Florida State University.

Ann Austin has been named interim associate provost for faculty and academic staff development at Michigan State University. She currently serves as a University Distinguished Professor, a professor of higher, adult, and lifelong education, and the associate dean for research in the university’s College of Education.

Dr. Austin is a graduate of Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. She holds a master’s degree from Syracuse University, and a master’s degree and Ph.D. both from the University of Michigan.