Three Women Scholars Who Have Been Named Chairs of Their Academic Departments

Julie Kmec is the new chair of the department of sociology at Washington State University. She joined the faculty in 2002 and was promoted to full professor in 2014. Dr. Kmec’s research focuses on workplace gender and race inequality and the effects of organizational practices and policies on workers and organizations. She is currently conducting research in Jordan, Malaysia, and Tunisia to assess the contextual factors that encourage women’s participation in engineering.

Dr. Kmec is a graduate of Indiana University in Bloomington. She earned a master’s degree in sociology at Ohio State University and a Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Anita Mattson has been appointed interim head of the department of chemistry and biochemistry in the School of Arts and Sciences at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. She will serve as interim head for a two-year term. Before joining the WPI faculty in 2016, she was an associate professor of chemistry at Ohio State University.

Dr. Mattison is a graduate of Northern Michigan University, Where she majored in chemistry. An organic synthetic chemist, Professor Mattison holds a Ph.D. from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

Andrea A. Hayes was appointed professor and chair of the department of surgery at the Howard University College of Medicine and Howard University Hospital. She will also serve as the associate director of the Cancer Center at Howard. Dr. Hayes is the first woman to serve as the chair of surgery at Howard University. Dr. Hayes joins Howard after serving as the surgeon-in-chief and division chief of pediatric surgery at the University of North Carolina Children’s Hospital, where she also served as a professor of pediatric surgery and surgical oncology.

A native of Los Angeles, Dr. Hayes earned a bachelor’s degree in religion and her medical degree at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.