New Assignments for Seven Women Faculty Members in Higher Education

Meng Zhao was appointed associate dean of the School of Nursing at North Carolina A&T State University. She previously served as associate professor and chair of the department of population health, health systems leadership in the College of Nursing and Health Sciences at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.

Dr. Zhao received a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Shandong University in China. She earned a Ph.D. in nursing from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Lucia Unrau was named director of the Greenwood School of Music at Oklahoma State University. She was the chair of the department of music at Murray State University in Kentucky. Dr. Unrau was a founding member of the Sterling Consort and Electro-metamorphosis, chamber music ensembles based in Southern California.

Dr. Unrau holds piano performance degrees from the University of Texas at Austin, Indiana University, and the Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio.

Kimberly Cornaggia is the new chair of the department of finance in the College of Business at Pennsylvania State University. She is the Louis and Virginia Benzak Professor of Finance at the business school. She teaches courses on corporate finance, corporate restructuring, equity valuation, multinational finance, and capital markets.

Dr. Cornaggia earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Nebraska and a doctorate in finance from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.

Karen Keaton Jackson, a professor of English and director of the Honors Program at North Carolina Central University, was given the added duties of interim associate provost for academic programs and undergraduate research at the university. She joined the faculty at the university in 2004.

Dr. Keaton Jackson holds a bachelor’s degree in English secondary education from Hampton University in Virginia. She earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in English from Wayne State University in Detroit.

Elizabeth Topp, a professor in department of industrial and physical pharmacy and the Davidson School of Chemical Engineering at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, was given the added duties of the inaugural director of the William D. and Sherry L. Young Advanced Manufacturing of Pharmaceuticals Institute at the university. Dr. Topp’s research focuses on the chemical and physical stability of protein drugs and other biologics, with an emphasis on chemical degradation reactions in the amorphous solid state.

Professor Topp holds a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of Delaware. She earned a master’s degree in chemical and biochemical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in pharmaceutics at the University of Michigan.

Berit Bangoura, an associate professor in the department of veterinary sciences at the University of Wyoming, has been appointed interim director of the Wyoming State Veterinary Laboratory. A member of the university’s faculty since 2017, Dr. Bangoura specializes in coccidiosis, a disease that affects livestock and birds.

Dr. Bangoura earned a doctor of veterinary medicine degree in 2003 and a Ph.D. in 2008, both from the University of Leipzig in Germany.

Penny Gordon-Larsen was named vice chancellor for research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has served in the role on an interim basis since March 2022. Dr. Gordon-Larsen is the Carla Smith Chamblee Distinguished Professor of Global Nutrition at the university.

Dr. Gordon-Larsen earned a bachelor’s degree in anthropology and experimental psychology from Tulane University in New Orleans. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in physical anthropology, with a focus on human biology from the University of Pennsylvania.