Melinda Lopez has joined the Boston College theatre department as the Rev. J. Donald Monan, S.J. Professor in Theatre Arts. She is teaching Contemporary American Theatre this fall and in the spring will teach a course on playwriting. In January, the college will stage her play “Back the Night,” which explores sexual violence on college campuses.
Lopez was Huntington Theatre Company’s playwright-in-residence from 2013 to 2019. She is a graduate of Dartmouth College, where she majored in drama. Lopez earned a master’s degree in playwriting from Boston University.
Holly Hillgardner was appointed to the Perry and Aleece Gresham Chair of Humanities at Bethany College in West Virginia. She is an associate professor of religious studies at the college. Dr. Hillgardner began teaching at the college in 2012 was granted tenure and promoted to associate professor in 2018.
Dr. Hillgardner has a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Texas at Arlington and has Ph.D. in theology and philosophy with a concentration in women’s studies from Drew University in Madison, New Jersey.
Clarissa Nobile has been named to the Kamangar Family Endowed Chair in Biological Sciences at the University of California, Merced. Dr. Nobile is widely known for her research into fungal pathogens and how microbes interact with each other to form biofilms.
Dr. Nobile is a graduate of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. She holds two master’s degrees and a Ph.D. from Columbia University in New York City.
Debby R. Walser-Kuntz was named the Herman and Gertrude Mosier Stark Professor of Biology and the Natural Sciences at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. She joined the faculty at the college in 1995.
Professor Walser-Kuntz is a graduate of Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota. She holds a master’s degree in teaching from Colorado College, and a Ph.D. in immunology from the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.