Five Women Scholars Who Are Taking on New Faculty Assignments

Ruth McCelland-Nugent is the new chair of the department of history, anthropology, and philosophy at Augusta University in Georgia. She joined the faculty at the university in 2005. Dr. McClelland-Nugent’s research is in transatlantic popular culture, including the heroines of Restoration comedies and military nurses in World War II movies.

Dr. McCelland-Nugent is a graduate of Franklin College in Indiana. She holds a Ph.D. in history from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Marisa Anne Pagnattaro, the Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia, has been named interim vice president for instruction, effective February. 1. Since 2019, she has served as vice provost for faculty affairs. Her scholarship focuses on international trade and business ethics and she is the author of In Defiance of the Law: From Anne Hutchinson to Toni Morrison (Peter Lang International Academic Publishers, 2001).

Professor Pagnattaro earned her bachelor’s degree in English from Colgate University in Hamilton, New York. She holds a juris doctorate from New York Law School and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Georgia.

Janice Nicholson was appointed head of the department of curriculum, instruction, and special education at Mississippi State University after leading the unit on an interim basis since March 2021. She served the University of North Alabama for 37 years in several leadership roles.

Dr. Nicholson is a graduate of Blue Mountain College in Mississippi. She went on to earn master’s and doctoral degrees in elementary education from the College of Education at Mississippi State University.

Danielle Dick, an internationally recognized and award-winning expert on genetic and environmental influences on human behavior, has been appointed as the inaugural director of the Rutgers Addiction Research Center at the Rutgers Brain Health Institute. Dr. Dick also will be a tenured professor in the department of psychiatry at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. Most recently, she was the Distinguished Commonwealth Professor of Psychology and Human and Molecular Genetics at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.

Dr. Dick is the author of The Child Code: Understanding Your Child’s Unique Nature for Happier, More Effective Parenting (Avery, 2021). She holds a Ph.D. in psychology from Indiana University.

Sierra Young is a new assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Utah State University. She will also be affiliated with the Utah Water Research Lab. She was an assistant professor in the biological and agricultural engineering department at North Carolina State University.

Dr. Young earned a bachelorʼs degree from Cornell University and a masterʼs degree and a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign. All of her degrees are in civil and environmental engineering.