Four Women Who Have Been Appointed to Endowed Positions in Higher Education

Rola El-Serag was named the L.E. and Virginia Simmons Senior Fellow in Health Policy at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston. She will also erve as a the director of the institute’s Center for Health and Biosciences. Dr. El-Serag has been serving as the medical director of the Women Veterans Health Program at the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center and an associate professor of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. She has been on the Baylor University faculty since 2004.

Dr. El-Serag is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles. She earned her medical degree at the Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston.

Catherine Peters was appointed the George J. Magee Professor of Geological Engineering at Princeton University in New Jersey. She joined the faculty at Princeton in 1994 and is the current chair of the department of civil and environmental engineering.

Professor Peters is a graduate of the University of Michigan, where she majored in chemical engineering. She holds a master’s degree in civil engineering and a Ph.D. in civil engineering and engineering and public policy from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
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Thelma Hurd has been appointed the inaugural Thondapu Family Endowed Chair in Medical Education at the University of California, Merced. In 2019, Dr. Hurd was appointed the director of the university’s medical education program after serving as a clinician, public health researcher, and translational scientist. Her research interests include health disparities, clinical oncology, and medical education.

Dr. Hurd is a graduate of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. She earned her medical degree at the University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey and holds a master of public health degree from George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Valerie Barr was named the Margaret Hamilton Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, effective in the fall of 2022. She will also serve as the director of the Bard Network Computing Initiative. Professor Barr is currently the Jean E. Sammet Professor of Computer Science at Mount Holyoke College in South hadley, Massachusetts.. She recently completed four years as chair of Mount Holyoke College’s computer science department.

Professor Barr is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College. She received a master’s degree from New York University and a Ph.D. from Rutgers University in New Jersey.