Seven Women Scholars Who Are Taking on New Assignments in Higher Education

Anne Edwards was promoted to professor of human development and family studies at Purdue Univerity Northwest in Hammond, Indiana. Professor Edwards joined the faculty in 1997 and her current research is focused on adults dealing with developmental disabilities.

Professor Edwards is a graduate of Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in human development and family studies from Pennsylvania State University.

Kamaljeet Sanghera, associate pProfessor of information sciences and technology at George Mason University, has been named interim executive director of the university’s Institute for Digital InnovAtion.

A native of India, Dr. Sanghere earned a Ph.D. through Capella University.

Elizabeth K. Markovits, professor of politics and director of the Teaching and Learning Initiative at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, has been appointed to serve as associate dean of faculty. Professor Markovits is the author of The Politics of Sincerity: Plato, Frank Speech, and Democratic Judgment (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008).

Dr. Markovits, who joined the faculty at Mount Holyoke in 2005, is a graduate of Rhodes College in Memphis. She earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Tamara Butler was appointed executive director of the College of Charleston’s Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture. She had served on the faculty of the English department and the African American and African studies program at Michigan State Univerity.

A graduate of Xavier University in New Orleans, Dr. Butler holds a master’s degree in African American and African studies and a doctorate in multicultural and equity studies in education from Ohio State University.

Zoë Ryan was appointed the Daniel W. Dietrich, II Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania. She will begin her new duties on November 5. She has been serving as the John H. Bryan Chair and Curator of Architecture and Design at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Ryan is a graduate of Sussex University in England. She holds a master’s degree in art history from Hunter College of the City University of New York.

Tyra Good was named the first faculty director of the Center for Equity in Urban Education at Elms College in Chicopee, Massachusetts. Most recently, she was an assistant professor of practice in education at Chatham University in Pittsburgh.

Dr. Good received her bachelor’s degree in business management from Howard University in Washington, D.C. She earned a master’s degree in teaching from Chatham University and a doctorate in educational leadership and evaluation from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh.

Susan Ustin, distinguished professor emeritus of environmental and resource science at the University of California, Davis, has been named interim director of the John Muir Institute of the Environment. She has served as the associate director of research at the institute since 2017.

Dr. Ustin joined the faculty at the university in 1990. She holds a Ph.D. in botany from the University of California, Davis