A Quartet of Women Who Have Been Appointed Deans

Tracy Mulvaney has been named dean of the School of Education at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. She has been serving as an associate professor in the department of educational counseling and leadership at Monmouth University in New Jersey. She previously served as the assistant dean and acting dean of the School of Education at Monmouth.

Dr. Mulvaney earned a bachelor’s degree in rehabilitation/special education and a master’s degree in special education at the University of Arizona. She holds a doctorate in educational leadership at Northern Arizona University.

Jelani Jefferson Exum has been appointed the next dean of St. Johns University School of Law in Queens, New York, effective June 1. She will be the second woman and the first African Americans to lead the law school. Currently, she is dean and the Philip J. McElroy Professor of Law at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law. Before joining the faculty at Detroit Mercy, Dean Exum was a professor at the University of Toledo College of Law and the University of Kansas School of Law.

Professor Exum is a graduate of Harvard University and Harvard Law School.

Rachel Davis Mersey is the new dean of the Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas. Dr. Mersey, who holds the Everett D. Collier Centennial Chair in the School of Journalism and Media at the university, has served as interim dean since July. Before joining the faculty at the University of Texas, Dr. Mersey was a professor and the associate dean for research in the Medill School of Journalism, Media and Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

Dr. Mersey earned a bachelor’s degree in communications from Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She holds a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University and a Ph.D. in mass communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Amy Adamson has been appointed interim dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, effective April 24. She has been associate dean since 2019. Dr. Adamson’s research focuses on the interaction of viruses with human cells.

Dr. Adamson earned her bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from the State University of New York at Geneseo and her Ph.D. in biology from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.