Four Women Professors Selected for New Academic Positions

Pamela G. Bourland-Davis, professor of public relations at Georgia Southern University, has been appointed vice chair of the Commission on Public Relations Education, a nonprofit organization that provides guidelines and standards for universities and professional associations regarding public relations education. She has been a faculty member with Georgia Southern for over two decades, previously serving as chair of the department of communication arts for 19 years.

Dr. Bourland-Davis received her bachelor’s degree from Georgia Southern University and her Ph.D. from the University of Georgia.

Chaoran Ma, assistant professor of nutrition at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has been elected chair of the Diet and Cancer Research interest section of the American Society for Nutrition. She first joined the University of Massachusetts faculty in 2023. Previously, she was a research fellow at Harvard Medical School

Dr. Ma received her bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in medicine from Xi’an Jiaotong University in China. She holds a Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University.

Courtney Schultz has been appointed director of the School of Global Environmental Sustainability at Colorado State University. She currently holds several other positions with the university, including professor of natural resource policy in forest and rangeland stewardship, director of the Climate Initiative, and director of the Public Lands Policy Group.

Dr. Schultz is a graduate of Stanford University, where she majored in international relations. She holds a master’s degree in conservation biology and sustainable development from the University of Maryland and a Ph.D. in forestry from the University of Montana.

Sylvia Biscoveanu has been appointed to the faculty at Princeton University as an assistant professor of physics. She will assume her new role in the Fall 2025 semester. She currently serves as a NASA Einstein Fellow with Northwestern University’s Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics.

Dr. Biscoveanu earned bachelor’s degrees in physics and Spanish from Pennsylvania State University. She received her Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.