Anita Thomas has been appointed provost of Meredith College, a women’s liberal arts college and co-ed graduate institution in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Most recently, Dr. Thomas served as president of North Central College in Illinois from July 2023 to July 2024. She was the college’s first woman and first person of color to hold the position. Earlier in her career, she was the executive vice president and provost of St. Catherine University, a women’s college in St. Paul, Minnesota. An academic psychologist, she studies racial identity, identity socialization, and using culturally affirming counseling approaches with African American families.
Dr. Thomas is a graduate of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where she majored in education and social policy. She holds a master’s degree in community counseling and a doctorate in counseling psychology from Loyola University Chicago.
Margo DelliCarpini has been named provost and vice president for academic affairs at the College of New Jersey.
Since October 2023, Dr. DelliCarpini has served as vice president for commonwealth campuses and executive chancellor at Pennsylvania State University. Earlier, she was chancellor of Penn State Abington. Before her career with Penn State, she was vice provost for strategic educational partnerships and dean of the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Her research focuses on English language acquisition, teacher preparation, and English language arts development.
Dr. DelliCaprini received her bachelor’s degree in linguistics, a master’s degree in teaching English to speakers of other languages, and a doctorate in linguistics from Stony Brook University in New York.
Rachel Davis Mersey has been appointed executive vice president and provost at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.
Dr. Mersey comes to her new role from the University of Texas at Austin, where she most recently served as executive vice president and provost. Earlier in her tenure, she was dean of the university’s Moody College of Communication. In addition to her career in academia, she previously served as director of global research partnerships at Meta. A full professor of journalism, she is the author of Can Journalism Be Saved? Rediscovering America’s Appetite for News (Praeger, 2010) and Mobile Disruptions in the Middle East (Routledge, 2018).
Dr. Mersey is a graduate of Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in communications and studio art. She holds a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois and a Ph.D. in mass communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Patricia Prelock has been named senior vice president for academic affairs and provost at the University of Arizona.
For the past six months, Dr. Prelock has been the interim president of the University of Vermont, where she had been serving as provost since 2019. Before her provost appointment, she served as dean of the university’s College of Nursing and Heath Sciences for 10 years. Prior to that role, she was chair of the department of communication sciences for seven years. Her academic expertise centers on the nature and treatment of autism in children, interprofessional education and collaborative practice, and family-centered care.
Dr. Prelock is a graduate of Kent State University in Ohio, where she earned her bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in speech pathology. She received her doctorate in speech-language pathology from the University of Pittsburgh.