Six Women Who Have Been Named to Dean Positions in Higher Education

Rama Yelkur was appointed dean of the College of Business at Texas Woman’s University, effective June 1. Dr. Yelkur most recently served as dean of the School of Business at St. John Fisher College in New York. Prior to that, she was dean of the Carmona College of Business and Management at Saginaw Valley State University in Michigan.

Dr. Yelkur is a graduate of Ethiraj College for Women in India, where she majored in mathematics. She holds an MBA from the PSG College of Technology in Coimbatore, India, and earned a doctor of business administration degree from Mississippi State University.

Laura Padilla-Walker will be the new dean of the College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Dr. Padilla-Walker currently serves as a professor in the School of Family Life and an associate dean in the College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences at the university.

Professor Padilla-Walker received master’s and doctoral degrees in developmental psychology from the University of Nebraska– Lincoln. She joined the BYU faculty in 2005.

Lolita Buckner Inniss was appointed dean of the University of Colorado School of Law, effective July 1. All four finalists for dean of the law school were women. Dr. Inniss has been serving as senior associate dean for academic affairs and professor of law, University Distinguished Professor, and the inaugural Robert G. Storey Distinguished Faculty Fellow at the Dedman School of Law at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. She is the author of The Princeton Fugitive Slave: The Trials of James Collins Johnson (Fordham University Press, 2020).

Professor Inniss received a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University, where she majored in romance languages and literature. She earned her law degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, where she was an editor of the National Black Law Journal. She also holds a master of law degree and a Ph.D. in law from Osgoode Hall Law School of York University in Canada.

Gretchen Hofmeister was named dean at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, for the 2021-22 academic year. Dr. Hofmeister, a professor of chemistry, has served as associate dean of the college since 2016. She will assume her new duties on July 1. She has been on the faculty at the college since 2002.

Dr. Hofmeister is a manga cum laude graduate of Carleton College. She earned a Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley.

Linda Kean, a professor of communication, has been appointed interim dean of the College of Fine Arts and Communication at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. She has been director of the School of Communication at the university since 2009. Dr. Kean joined ECU’s faculty as an assistant professor in 1998, became an associate professor in 2004, and earned the rank of professor in 2013.

Professor Kean holds a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism from the University of Illinois-Urbana. She earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in communication arts from the University of Wisconsin.

Sara Guyer has been appointed the next dean of arts and humanities in the College of Letters & Science at the University of California, Berkeley, effective July 1. Dr. Guyer has been serving as a professor of English and Jewish studies and director of the Center for the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin.

Professor Guer earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in rhetoric from the University of California, Berkeley. She also earned a master’s degree in philosophy from the University of Warwick in England and a bachelor’s degree in English and American literature and European cultural studies from Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts.