Six Women Professors Appointed to Endowed Faculty Positions

Kelden Pehr has been named the Harold Hamm Distinguished Professor at the University of North Dakota. She currently serves the university as an associate professor of geology and geological engineering. As a scholar, she specializes in organic geochemistry, chemical oceanography, and astrobiology.

Dr. Pehr holds a bachelor’s degree in environmental engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a doctorate in geological sciences from the University of California, Riverside.

Susan Park has been named the John Elorriaga Endowed Professor at Boise State University in Idaho. She is an associate professor of legal studies in business in the university’s department of management. Before joining the Boise State faculty, she practiced law in Boise and served as a law clerk for the Idaho Supreme Court.

Park received her bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Colorado and her juris doctorate from the University of Idaho.

Luna Magpili has been appointed the Wendell J. Satre Distinguished Professor in Engineering and Technology Management at Washington State University. She has taught at the university for over a decade, currently serving as an associate professor and director of the department of engineering and technology management.

Dr. Magpili received her bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in industrial engineering from the University of the Philippines. She holds a Ph.D. in systems engineering from the University of Virginia.

Theresa C. Anderson has been named the Gregg Zeitlin Early Career Professor of Mathematical Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Prior to joining the Carnegie Mellon faculty in 2022, she was an assistant professor at Purdue University in Indiana. Her scholarship focuses on rewriting the mathematical landscape by finding new connections between harmonic analysis and number theory.

Dr. Anderson is an honors graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she triple-majored in mathematics, chemistry, and Spanish. She holds a master’s degree and Ph.D. in mathematics from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

E. Binney Girdler has been named the Dow Distinguished Professor in Natural Sciences at Kalamazoo College in Michigan. She first joined the Kalamazoo College faculty in 2001 as an assistant professor. She currently serves as a full professor of biology and co-director of the environmental studies program. Her research involves studying the structure and dynamics of terrestrial plant communities.

Dr. Girdler holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia, a master’s degree from Yale University, and a Ph.D. from Princeton University.

Valerie Vaughn has been named the inaugural Bertram H. and Janet M. Schaap Presidential Endowed Chair at the University of Utah. She currently holds several positions with the university including associate professor in the division of general internal medicine, director of clinical research in the department of internal medicine, and director of hospital medicine research at University of Utah Health.

Dr. Vaughn is a graduate of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, where she majored in chemistry. She holds a master’s degree in health and health services research and a medical degree from the University of Michigan.