Five Women Faculty Members Who Are Taking on New Assignments in Academia

Claudia Rankine, an award-winning poet, will join the faculty at New York University in the summer of 2021 as a professor of creative writing. Since 2016, she has served as the Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale University. In 2015, Professor Rankine won the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry for her book Citizen: An American Lyric (Graywolf Press, 2014).

Professor Rankine is a native of Jamaica and moved to the United States at the age of 7. She is a graduate of Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where she majored in literature. Professor Rankine holds a master of fine arts degree in poetry from Columbia University.

Lydia Moland was promoted to full professor of philosophy at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. She is the author of Hegel on Political Identity: Patriotism, Nationality, Cosmopolitanism (Northwestern University Press, 2011). She is currently working on a book about abolitionist Lydia Maria Child.

Dr. Moland holds a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree, and a Ph.D., all from Boston University.

Pamela VanHaitsma, an assistant professor of communication arts and sciences and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, as well as the interim director of the Center for Humanities and Information at Pennsylvania State University, was appointed as a Douglas S. and Joyce L. Sherwin Early Career Professor in the Rock Ethics Institute at the university. The professorship recognizes faculty in the early stage of their career for outstanding achievements in research, teaching, and service that integrate ethics in innovative ways. The appointment includes support for recipients’ research and teaching programs. Dr. VanHaitsma is the author of Queering Romantic Engagement in the Postal Age: A Rhetorical Education (University of South Carolina Press, 2019).

Dr. VanHaitsma is a graduate of Saginaw Valley State University in Michigan, She holds master’s degrees from Ohio State University and San Francisco State University. Dr. VanHaitsma earned a Ph.D. in English at the University of Pittsburgh.

Fotini Christia, professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was named director of the Sociotechnical Systems Research Center. The interdisciplinary center, part of the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society in the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing, focuses on the study of high-impact, complex societal challenges that shape our world. Dr. Christia is the author of Alliance Formation in Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2012). She joined the MIT faculty in 2008.

A native of Greece, Dr. Christia moved to the United States to attend college at Columbia University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in economics/operations research and a master’s degree in international affairs.  She holds a Ph.D. in public policy from Harvard University.

Heather Nachtmann, a professor of industrial engineering at the University of Arkansas, has been named senior associate vice chancellor for research and innovation, effective November 1. Dr. Nachtmann joined the industrial engineering faculty at the University of Arkansas in 2000.

Professor Natchtmann holds bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in industrial engineering, all from the University of Pittsburgh.