Five Women Who Have Been Appointed to University Dean Positions

Eun-Ok Im was appointed dean of the School of Nursing at the University of Texas at Austin, effective September 1. She has been serving as the senior associate dean for research and innovation and held the Edith Folsom Honeycutt Endowed Chair in the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing at Emory University in Atlanta. From 2007 to 2011, Dr. Im was the La Quinta Motor Inns Inc. Centennial Professor in Nursing at the University of Texas at Austin. Her work focuses on the use of technology-based interventions to provide innovative care and cross-cultural women’s health research.

Dr. Im received a bachelor’s degree in nursing and a master’s degree in public health from Seoul National University in Korea. She holds a master’s degree and Ph.D. in nursing from the University of California, San Francisco.

Andrea Tapia was named interim dean of the  College of Information Sciences and Technology at Pennsylvania State University. Since 2021, she has been serving as associate dean for research and professor at the college. Dr. Tapia joined the college in 2002 as an assistant professor. She was awarded tenure and promoted to associate professor in 2010 and became a full professor in 2019.

Dr. Tapia is a graduate of the State University of New York at Potsdam, where she majored in Spanish and international relations. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of New Mexico.

Cindy Juntunen was named associate provost and dean of graduate studies and research at California State University, Monterrey Bay, effective September 5. She has been serving as dean of the College of Education and Human Development at the University of North Dakota. She had been on the faculty there for 29 years.

Dr. Juntunen is a graduate of the University of North Dakota, where she majored in psychology. She holds a master’s degree in pre-counseling psychology from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, and a Ph.D. in counseling psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Nikesha Nesbitt was appointed interim dean of University College at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro. Dr. Nesbitt was associate dean of University College and the program director for nontraditional studies. She also was associate director of undergraduate studies. She began teaching at the university as a graduate assistant in English in 2006, then as a full-time instructor in the department of English and philosophy in 2008.

Dr. Nesbitt earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. She holds a master’s degree in English and a doctorate in educational leadership from Arkansas State University.

Molly Land, a scholar of human rights and international law who joined the faculty at the University of Connecticut School of Law in 2013, has been named associate dean for academic affairs at the law school. Earlier in her career, Professor Land taught at the Institute for Information Law and Policy at New York Law School.

Professor Land is a graduate of Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. She was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Bonn in Germany and earned her law degree at Yale University.