New Duties for Seven Women Scholars at Universities

Victoria Wolcott, professor of history in the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences, is the new director of the university’s Institute for Research and Education on Women and Gender. She joined the faculty in 2011. Dr. Wolcott is the author of Living in the Future: Utopianism and the Long Civil Rights Movement (University of Chicago Press, 2022).

Professor Wolcott is a graduate of New York University. She holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Michigan.

Elsa Olivetti, the Jerry McAfee (1940) Professor in Engineering in the department of materials science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been appointed associate dean of engineering at the university. She joined the MIT faculty in 2014. Her research develops experimental and analytical methods for the efficient use of industrial waste and recycled materials in concrete, metals, and plastic.

Professor Olivetti is a graduate of the University of Virginia, where she majored in engineering. She earned a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering at MIT.

Renata Arrington Sanders was named chief of the Craig Dalsimer Division of Adolescent Medicine at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, a teaching facility for the School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Sanders was an associate professor of pediatrics in the Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore.

Dr. Sanders holds a bachelor’s degree and a master of public health degree from Johns Hopkins University. She earned her medical degree at the University of Virginia.

Karen Bacon, currently the dean of Yeshiva College and Stern College for Women, was named associate vice president for academic affairs at Yeshiva University in New York City. Dr. Bacon joined the faculty at Yeshiva University as an assistant professor of biology and has served as dean since 1977.

Bacon earned her bachelor’s degree from Stern College for Women and served as valedictorian of her graduating class. She earned her doctorate in microbiology from the University of California at Los Angeles.

Kristina Kersey is a new assistant professor at the University of Tennessee College of Law. Kersey worked for the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender for over 18 years, specializing in youth defense.

Professor Kersey is a graduate of Rutgers University in New Jersey. She earned a juris doctorate at the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C.

Carrie Manning, a professor of political science, has been appointed as the new associate provost for international Initiatives at Georgia State University in Atlanta. She served as chair of the department of political science from 2011 to 2017. Her most recent book is Costly Democracy: Peacebuilding and Democratization After War (Stanford University Press, 2013).

Professor Manning is a graduate of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. She holds a master of public affairs degree from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Christina Metevier, a senior lecturer in psychological and brain sciences at the University of Massachusetts was appointed associate provost for academic programs at the university’s Mount Ida campus. She was the director of linking employment and academic development (LEAD) at the Mount Ida campus. Dr. Metevier joined the faculty in 2010.

Dr. Metevier holds a Ph.D. in neuroscience and behavior from the University of Massachusetts.