Colleges and Universities Have Announced the Appointments of Four Women to Dean Positions

Michelle Knight-Manuel has been appointed dean of the Morgridge College of Education at the University of Denver, effective July 1. Dr. Knight-Manuel’s areas of research and teaching expertise include curriculum and teacher education, equity, and urban schooling. She has been serving as a professor of education at Teachers College of Columbia University.

Dr. Knight-Manuel earned a bachelor’s degree in French and secondary education from Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She holds a master’s degree from the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California and a Ph.D. in curriculum and teaching from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Victoria Rosner was appointed dean of the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University, effective July 15. She has been serving as dean of academic affairs for the School of General Studies at Columbia University. She taught at Texas A&M University from 1998 to 2010 when she joined the faculty at Columbia. She is the author of Machines for Living: Modernism and Domestic Life (Oxford University Press, 2020) and Modernism and the Architecture of Private Life (Columbia University Press, 2005).

Dr. Rosner holds bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in comparative literature, all from Columbia University.

Melanie B. Jacobs will be the next dean of the Louis D. Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville. She will take office in July. Professor Jacobs is a nationally and internationally recognized expert in family law. Her scholarship advocates for legal recognition of non-traditional families and changes to the traditional establishment of parent-child relationships due to the increased use of assisted reproductive technologies. She has taught at the Michigan State University College of Law since 2002.

Professor Jacobs is a graduate of Columbia University in New York City. She earned a juris doctorate at Boston University and a master’s degree in law from Temple University in Philadelphia.

Kathy J. Wolfe has been named vice president of academic affairs and dean at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia. She has been serving as dean of engaged education at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York.

Dr. Wolfe earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Nebraska Wesleyan University and a Ph.D. in English from Texas Christian University.