Ten Women Faculty Members Who Have Been Assigned New Duties

Julie Lucero has been named director of the Latino Research Center at the University of Nevada Reno. She has served as an assistant professor of health sciences in the university’s School of Community Health Sciences since 2015.

Dr. Lucero holds a bachelor’s degree, a master of public health degree, and a Ph.D. all from the University of New Mexico.

Dana Stachowiak has been named director of the Women’s Studies and Resource Center at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. She is an associate professor of curriculum and instruction in the department of educational leadership in the Watson College of Education. She has been a faculty member at the university since 2016.

Dr. Stachowiak is a graduate of Western Michigan University where she majored in elementary education. She holds a master of education degree in curriculum and instruction from Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and a Ph.D. in educational studies with a concentration in cultural foundations from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Narketta Sparkman-Key, associate professor for counseling and human services at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, recently was named director of faculty diversity and retention. Dr. Sparkman-Key’s research focus is geared toward further defining the professional identity of human services practitioners and she is an expert on adolescent suicide.

Dr. Sparkman-Key is a graduate of Madonna University in Livonia, Michigan, where she majored in sociology. She holds a master’s degree from the University of Michigan-Dearborn and earned a doctorate in human services through Capella University.

Award-winning journalist Maria Hinojosa has been named the inaugural Journalist-in-Residence at Barnard College in New York City. Hinojosa, the founding anchor and now executive producer of National Public Radio’s Latino USA, will teach a creative writing course about processing trauma and a journalism course about covering incarceration and immigration issues from a Latinx perspective. Future classes will similarly probe the intersections of nonfiction, personal memoir, immigration, and journalism.

Hinojosa was born in Mexico City and raised on the South Side of Chicago. She is a magna cum laude graduate of Barnard College with a degree in Latin American studies and minors in political science and women’s studies.

Pritha Chaudhuri is a new assistant professor of economics at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. Dr. Chaudhuri grew up in Kolkata, India. Her research is in the field of macroeconomics and focuses on how the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy is affected by the changing composition of the labor market.

Dr. Chaudhuri holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Calcutta and a master’s degree in applied economics from Presidency University. She earned a Ph.D. in economics at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.

Velma McBride Murry has been named University Professor of Human and Organizational Development and University Professor of Health Policy at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. Professor Murray holds appointments in the Peabody College of education and human development and the School of Medicine. She has been a faculty member at Vanderbilt since 2008.

Dr. Murry attained a bachelor’s degree from the University of Tennessee. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Stephanie Paulsell, the Susan Shallcross Swartz Professor of the Practice of Christian Studies at Harvard Divinity School, was appointed interim Pusey Minister at the Memorial Church on the Harvard campus. A distinguished scholar who teaches religion and literature, Christian spirituality, and ministry studies, Paulsell has been an affiliated minister at Memorial Church for the past seven years. She is an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

Dr. Paulsell, who joined the Harvard faculty in 2001, studied religion and English at Greensboro College and earned a Ph.D. in religion and literature at the University of Chicago.

Jamie A. Cooper, an associate professor of food and nutrition in the College of Family and Consumer Sciences at the University of Georgia, was appointed director of the Obesity Initiative at the university. Her research is currently focused on examining the metabolic and endocrine responses to high-fat meals or diets.

Dr. Cooper holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in kinesiology from Michigan State University. She earned a Ph.D. in nutritional sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Rebecca Gilman was named director of the master of fine arts degree program in playwriting in the School of Theatre & Dance at Texas Tech University. She was the Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

Dr. Gilman is a graduate of Birmingham Southern College in Alabama. She earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. at the University of Iowa.

Bevlee Watford, professor of engineering education and associate dean for academic affairs at the College of Engineering at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, is taking on a new role as associate dean of equity and engagement for the College of Engineering.

Dr. Watford has been associate dean at Virginia Tech since 1997. She holds a bachelor’s degree in mining engineering, a master’s degree, and a Ph.D. in industrial engineering and operations research, all from Virginia Tech.