Nine Women Faculty Members Who Are Taking on New Roles in Higher Education

Erin McGlothlin has been named vice dean of undergraduate affairs in the College of Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, effective June 1. Dr. McGlothlin is a professor of German and chair of the university’s department of Germanic languages and literatures and professor of Jewish studies in the department of Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern studies.

Professor McGlothlin joined the faculty at Washington University in 2001. She is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in German from the University of Virginia.

Elise Boddie, a Henry Rutgers professor, professor of law, and Judge Robert L. Carter Scholar at Rutgers Law School in Newark, was appointed the Newark campus director of the university’s Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice. She is the former chief litigator for the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund. Her scholarship explores the regulation of race in spatial contexts and dynamic systems that perpetuate racial inequality.

Professor Boddie is a graduate of Yale University. She holds a master’s degree in public policy and a juris doctorate from Harvard University.

Ching-Yao Lai is a new assistant professor of geosciences at Princeton University in New Jersey. Her recent work combines deep-learning and physics-based models to predict the disintegration of ice shelves in a warming climate.

Dr. Lai earned a bachelor’s degree at National Taiwan University, where she majored in physics. She earned a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Princeton in 2018.

Angela Owens has been named director of New Mexico State University’s Glass Family Research Institute for Early Childhood Studies. The institute seeks to influence policy and practices related to New Mexico’s young children, families, and early childhood educators.

Dr. Owens earned a bachelor’s degree, two master’s degrees, and a Ph.D. in teaching, learning, and culture with an emphasis in literacy and bi-literacy education from the University of Texas at El Paso.

This coming fall, Jomaira Salas Pujols will join the faculty in the sociology department at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. She is completing work on a doctorate in sociology at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

Pujols was a first-generation college student who earned a bachelor’s degree at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, where she majored in sociology and minored in education.

Andrea Mitofsky was promoted to full professor of electrical and computer engineering at Trine Univerity in Angola, Indiana. Her research interests include signal processing, electromagnetics, and optics.

Dr. Mitofsky holds a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree, and a Ph.D., all in electrical engineering and all from the University of Illinois.

Layla Oesper was promoted to associate professor of computer science at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, and granted tenure. She joined the Carleton’s faculty in 2015. Her research centers around designing algorithms for analysis of high-throughput DNA sequencing data.

Dr. Oesper received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Pomona College in California. She went on to earn a master’s degree in computer science and a Ph.D. in computer science from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

Maria Markakis Zestos, professor of anesthesiology at the Wayne State University School of Medicine, has been given the added duties of interim associate dean of graduate medical education. Shre has been on the university’s faculty since 1997.

A graduate of Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, Dr. Zestos earned her medical degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.

Tanya S. Byker was promoted to associate professor of economics and granted tenure at Middlebury College in Vermont. She joined the faculty in the fall of 2014 and teaches courses in regression and the economics of gender.

Dr. Byker is a graduate of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. She earned a Ph.D. at the University of Michigan.