Eight Women Professors Appointed to New Roles in Academia

Walaa Awad has been named associate dean of the health and wellness division at Delta College in Michigan. She comes to her new role from Baker College, where she was a professor and director of the college’s science program. She currently serves as a professor of health science for Purdue Global and Colorado State University Global.

Dr. Awad earned her medical degree from Tanta University in Egypt. She holds a master’s degree in public health education from the University of Michigan-Flint and a Ph.D. in global health epidemiology from Walden University.

Songjie He has joined the faculty at the University of Southern Mississippi as an assistant professor in the division of coastal sciences in the School of Ocean Science and Engineering. Her biogeochemistry research focuses on nitrogen, carbon, phosphorus, and trace metal fluxes within coastal systems.

Dr. He received her Ph.D. from Louisiana State University.

J. Lenore Wright has been granted the designation of Master Teacher at Baylor University in Texas. The title is the university’s highest faculty honor. Dr. Wright is a professor of interdisciplinary studies and philosophy who has been a Baylor faculty member for over two decades. She has held several roles throughout her long tenure, including director of the Academy of Teaching and Learning. Her scholarship focuses on theories and modes of self-representation and feminist philosophy.

Dr. Wright received her bachelor’s degree from Morehead State University in Kentucky, master’s degree from Baylor University, and Ph.D. in philosophy from the State University of New York.

Rebecca Woodland, professor of educational policy, leadership, and evaluation in the College of Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has been named vice president of the International Network for the Science of Team Science, a global nonprofit organization of scientists advocating for cross-disciplinary collaborative research. A UMass Amherst faculty member since 2021, she also serves as director of program evaluation for the Center for Educational Assessment, director of the graduate certificate in program evaluation, and associate director for the Center for Education Policy.

Dr. Woodland is an alumna of UMass Amherst, where she majored in political science. She holds a master’s degree in special education from the University of Northern Colorado and a Ph.D. in educational leadership from Colorado State University.

Nidhal C. Bouaynaya has been named the inaugural associate vice president for artificial intelligence at Rowan University in New Jersey. She currently serves the university as a professor of electrical and computer engineering and director of the Machine & Artificial Intelligence Virtual Reality Center. In her new role, she will work on the ethical adoption of AI to enhance the university’s education, research, operations, and community impact.

Dr. Bouaynaya received her bachelor’s degree from Ecole Nationale Superieure de l’Electronique et de ses Applications in France and her master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology. She holds a second master’s degree in pure mathematics and a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

D’Jaris Coles-White has been appointed as the inaugural program director for the new master’s degree program in speech-language pathology at McDaniel College in Westminster, Maryland. She comes to her new role from Western Michigan University, where she was an associate professor and associate chair of the department of speech, language, and hearing sciences. Her research focuses on autism and child language.

Dr. Coles-White holds a bachelor’s degree in speech and hearing sciences from Columbia College in South Carolina, a master’s degree in speech-language pathology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a Ph.D. in communication disorders from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Heather McMillan has been selected to serve as interim chair of the department of management in the Harrison College of Business and Computing at Southeast Missouri State University. A faculty member with the university since 2008, she previously taught at the University of Tennessee and East Tennessee State University. Prior to her career in academia, she gained nearly a decade of human resources experience in healthcare settings.

Dr. McMillan received her bachelor of business administration degree in human resources and her MBA in health care human resources from East Tennessee State University. She holds a Ph.D. in management from the University of Tennessee.

Mary Caldorera-Moore has been named associate dean of undergraduate studies in the College of Engineering and Science at Louisiana Tech University. She first joined the university’s faculty in 2013 and currently holds the title of Daniel D. and Linda D. Reneau Endowed Professor in Biomedical Engineering. She also serves as the academic director of the industrial engineering and instrumentation and control systems engineering technology programs.

Dr. Caldorera-Moore received her bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering from Louisiana Tech University. She holds a master’s degree and Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.