Four Women Scholars Who Have Been Appointed to Endowed Professorships

Carole Boyce Davies was named the Frank H.T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters and professor in Africana studies at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. She is the former Herskovits Professor of African Studies and professor of comparative literary studies and African American studies at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. She is the author of Black Women, Writing and Identity: Migrations of the Subject (Routledge, 1994) and Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones (Duke University Press, 2008).

Born in Trinidad and Tobago, Professor Boyce Davies earned a bachelor’s degree in English at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. She holds a master’s degree in Africana studies from Howard University in Washington, D.C., and a Ph.D. in African literature from the University of Ibadan in Nigeria.

Denise Hien, a leader in the field of post-traumatic stress and addictions, was named the inaugural holder of the Helen E. Chaney Chair in Alcohol Studies at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Dr. Hien is the director of Rutgers University’s Center of Alcohol and Substance Abuse Studies, associate dean for academic affairs, and professor in the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology.

Dr. Hien is a graduate of Cornell University, where she majored in psychology. She earned two master’s degrees and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Teachers College at Columbia University.

Kateryna Makova has been appointed as the holder of the Verne M. Willaman Chair in the Life Sciences at Pennsylvania State University. She is also the director of the Center of Medical Genomics at the university. Dr. Makova’s research is focused on genomics, evolution, and human genetics. Prior to joining the Penn State faculty in 2003, Professor Makova had been a postdoctoral fellow in the department of ecology and evolution at the University of Chicago.

Dr. Makova holds a master’s degree in biochemistry and molecular biology from Kiev State University in Ukraine. She earned a Ph.D. in biology at Texas Tech University.

Audrey Jaeger was appointed to the W. Dallas Herring Professorship in Community College Education at North Carolina State University. She has been serving as the Alumni Distinguished Graduate Professor in the university’s College of Education and executive director of the Belk Center for Community College Leadership and Research. Her research focuses on understanding how community college presidents make decisions related to completion and transfer, equity, labor market outcomes, and teaching and learning to impact student success.

Dr. Jaeger is an associate editor of the journal Research in Higher Education and on the editorial boards of the Journal of Higher Education and the Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement. She holds a Ph.D. from New York University.