Five Women Scholars Who Have Been Assigned New Duties at Colleges and Universities

Kathi Kern will be joining the department of religious studies in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Miami as a professor, with a secondary appointment in the School of Education and Human Development. She will also serve as the inaugural vice provost for educational innovation at the university. Dr. Kern has been serving as a professor of history and director of the Center for the Enhancement of Learning & Teaching at the University of Kentucky.

Professor Kern earned a Ph.D. in history at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Mrs. Stanton’s Bible (Cornell University Press, 2001).

In March, Ruth Simmons, president of Prairie View A&M University in Texas since 2017, announced that she will step down when a successor is found. She has now announced that when her presidency is over, she will remain at the university as a professor. She will not be affiliated with one particular department and will be able to teach courses throughout the university’s academic disciplines. Dr. Simmons served as the eighteenth president of Brown University, the Ivy League educational institution in Providence, Rhode Island, from 2001 to 2012. Before becoming president of Brown University, Dr. Simmons was president of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Earlier, she was vice provost at Princeton University in New Jersey and provost at Spelman College in Atlanta.

Dr. Simmons is a native of Houston and is a product of the city’s public school system. She is a graduate of Dillard University in New Orleans and holds a Ph.D. in Romance languages and literatures from Harvard University.

Pamela Eddy, a professor of education at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, was named the inaugural associate provost for faculty affairs and development, effective January 2023. She has taught at William & Mary for 14 years.

Dr. Eddy is a graduate of Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania. She holds a master’s degree from Cornell University and a doctorate from Michigan State University.

Jenna Cobb will join the faculty at the Boston College Law School this fall as a clinical assistant professor. She has been serving as a staff attorney in the Special Litigation Division of the Public Defender Service. Since 2015, Cobb has been an adjunct professor at the University of the District of Columbia’s David A. Clarke School of Law.

Cobb holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Southern California. She earned a master of divinity degree at Yale Divinity School and a juris doctorate from Harvard Law School, where she served as assistant managing editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review.

Xiaoxia “Silvie” Huang is jong the faculty in the School of Education at Syracuse University in New York. She has been serving as an associate professor of instructional design in the School of Teacher Education at Western Kentucky University. Her research focuses on designing and evaluating technology-enhanced learning environments.

Dr. Huang earned a Ph.D. in instructional systems from Florida State University.