Five Women Scholars Taking on New Faculty Roles at Colleges and Universities

Kim Booker was named director of the Center for Sales and Service Excellence in the Spears School of Business at Oklahoma State University. As a faculty position, the job includes teaching as well as managing the program’s Certificate in Sales and Service Excellence.

Booker received a bachelor’s degree in political science from Texas State University and an MBA from the University of Texas at Arlington.

Tonya Butler was appointed chair of the music business and management at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. When she becomes chair in August, She will be the first woman to hold the position. Professor Butler joined the faculty at the college in 2017 after teaching at Minnesota State University, Mankato. She is the author of The Music Business Is Corrupt, or Maybe You Just Can’t Sing? (CreateSpace, 2015).

Professor Butler holds a juris doctorate from California Western School of Law in San Diego and a master’s degree in entertainment and media law from Southwestern University School of Law in Los Angeles.

Victoria Sancho Lobis is the new director of the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College in Claremont, California. The museum will open this coming fall. She will also hold a faculty appointment in the college’s art history department. Since 2013, Dr. Lobis has served in a range of curatorial and administrative roles at The Art Institute of Chicago. Before her time at the Art Institute, Dr. Lobis served for four years as the inaugural curator of the print collection and fine art galleries at the University of San Diego.

Dr. Lobis received a bachelor’s degree from Yale University, a master’s degree from Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Columbia University.

Raeann LeBlanc has been named the Seedworks Endowed Clinical Assistant Professor for Social Justice in the College of Nursing at the University of Massachusetts. She has taught at the university since 2011. Her research addresses health disparities in advanced care planning and the effect of social networks on self-care among older adults.

Dr. LeBlanc holds a bachelor’s degree in English literature, a doctor of nursing practice degree and a Ph.D. in nursing, all from the University of Massachusetts. She also earned a master’s degree in community health nursing from the University of Southern Maine.

Lisa Lesch Palmer will be the inaugural National Geographic Visiting Professor of Science Communication in the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. She has spent the past four years working for the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center in Annapolis, Maryland, serving as a senior fellow for Socio-Environmental Understanding.

Palmer holds a bachelor’s degree from Boston University and a Ph.D. from Simmons Univerity in Boston. She is the author of Hot Hungry Planet: The Fight to Stop a Global Food Crisis in the Face of Climate Change (St. Martin’s Press, 2017).