Ten Women Who Have Been Appointed to Administrative Positions in Higher Education

Maria Mangold was promoted to registrar at the University of Montana. She joined the staff at the university in 2010 as an academic adviser in the College of Humanities and Sciences. She later spent three years as registrar and director of student services at the university’s Alexander Blewett III School of Law.

Mangold holds a bachelor’s degree from Illinois Wesleyan University. She earned a master’s degree in education from Loyola University in Chicago.

Michèle G. Turner was appointed associate vice president and director of the Office of Business Diversity and Economic Opportunity at the University of Southern California. She is the former executive director of the USC Black Alumni Association.

Dr. Turner holds a bachelor’s degree and an educational doctorate from the University of Southern California. She earned an MBA at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Aleksandra Cataruzolo was named development manager/assistant director of grants at the Borough of Manhattan Community College in New York. Most recently, Cataruzolo served as a program administrator for the Professional Staff Congress-City University of New York Research Grants at the Research Foundation.

Cataruzolo is a graduate of Arizona State University, where she majored in journalism and mass communications.

Fenita Morris-Shepard was named chief legal counsel for North Carolina Central University. Morris-Shepard served as interim chief legal counsel at NCCU from March 2020 to January 2021. Prior to joining NCCU, she served as counsel at Phelps Dunbar. She is the former assistant United States attorney in the Civil Division in the Eastern District of North Carolina.

Morris-Shepard is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She earned her law degree at North Carolina Central University.

Mindy Rogers is the director of the Kentucky Cancer Program – East at the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center. Rogers’ affiliation with the program began as a regional cancer control specialist in 2008.

Rogers completed her bachelor’s degree at Eastern Kentucky University and earned a master’s degree in communication from Morehead State University.

Sandra Wilson was appointed assistant dean for the John P. Burke School of Public Service & Education at Post University in Waterbury, Connecticut. She has been serving as director of undergraduate public service and education programs and program chair for the criminal justice program at the university.

Wilson is a graduate of Albertus Magnus College in New Haven, Connecticut. She holds a master’s degree in education from the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut and a juris doctorate from New England Law School.

Marcy Muldrow Sanders has been named National Security Innovation Network program director for Florida A&M University and the Florida State University System. The initiative is designed to expose faculty and students to civilian research and entrepreneurship opportunities with the U.S. Department of Defense. A retired Navy commander, Muldrow Sanders specialized in anti-submarine warfare during her military career.

Muldrow Sanders earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism at Florida A&M University. She went on to earn a master’s degree in business administration from Chaminade University in Honolulu and a doctor of public health degree in epidemiology from Capella University.

Elizabeth M. Renieris, a technology and human rights fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a practitioner fellow at Stanford University’s Digital Civil Society Lab, has been appointed founding director of the Notre Dame-IBM Technology Ethics Lab at the University of Notre Dame. Launched in 2020, the Notre Dame-IBM Tech Ethics Lab aims to address ethical questions associated with the development and use of emerging technologies such as AI and machine learning.

Renieris is a graduate of Harvard University. She holds a juris doctorate from Vanderbilt University in Nashville and a master’s degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Ragan D. R. Royal was appointed assistant vice president for individual giving in the Office of Development and Alumni Relations at Howard University in Washington, D.C. She joins Howard from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, where she was the managing director of major gifts. Earlier, she served as associate vice president of development at the University of Maryland Global Campus.

Royal holds a master’s degree in philanthropic studies from St. Mary’s University in Minnesota.

Lisa Wilkes, who previously served as vice president for business affairs and special assistant to the president, has been named vice president for strategic initiatives and special assistant to the president at Virginia Tech. A native of Pulaski, Virginia, Wilkes began her career at Virginia Tech as a graduate student intern in 1995.

Dr. Wilkes holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Radford University in Virginia. She earned a Ph.D. in higher education administration from Virginia Tech.