Five Women Scholars Who Have Been Appointed to New Positions at Colleges and Universities

Joanne Solis-Walker will join Emory University’s Candler School of Theology as associate dean and professor of leadership, effective January 1. She currently serves as special assistant to the president on diversity and associate professor of practical theology in the College of Theology and Christian Ministry at Northwest Nazarene University in Nampa, Idaho. Earlier, she was assistant dean of global theological education and director of education for Latinos and Latinas at Wesley Seminary at Indiana Wesleyan University and director of the Latino/Latina studies program at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky.

Dr. Solis-Walker earned a master of divinity degree from Asbury Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. in organizational leadership and development from Regent University in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Judith Green McKenzie has been hired as a professor of medicine and executive director for health, safety, and environment for Johns Hopkins University and the Johns Hopkins Health System beginning December 1. She has been serving as a professor of emergency medicine at the hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. McKenzie is a graduate of Princeton University, where she majored in biology. She holds a  master of public health degree from Johns Hopkins University and a medical doctorate from Yale University.

Sophie Esch, associate professor of modern and classical literatures and cultures at Rice University in Houston, has been given the added duties of director of the Initiative for the Study of LatinX America. She joined the faculty at Rice in 2018 after teaching at Colorado State University. Dr. Esch is the author of Modernity at Gunpoint: Firearms, Politics, and Culture in Mexico and Central America (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018).

Dr. Esch holds a combined bachelor’s and master’s degree in Latin American literature, political science, and North American
studies from Freie Universität in Berlin, Germany. She earned a Ph.D. in Spanish and  Portuguese at Tulane University in New Orleans.

Andia Augustin-Billy is a new assistant professor of French and Francophone studies at Centenary College of Louisiana in Shreveport. Her research interests include analysis of gender and sexuality in 19th and 20th-century French literature, travel literature, and themes of migration and exile in Francophone African and Caribbean literatures and cultures.

Dr. Augustin-Billy received a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in French language and literatures from Washington University in St. Louis.

Jennifer Keys has been appointed director of the Searle Center for Advancing Learning and Teaching and professor in the department of sociology at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Professor Keys was a professor of sociology at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois, for 18 years.

Professor Keys is a graduate of Ohio University, where she majored in sociology and psychology. She earned a Ph.D. in sociology at the University at Albany of the State University of New York System.