Five Women Who Have Been Selected for Endowed Professorships

Catherine Petrany has been named the Boniface Wimmer Endowed Chair in Monastic Studies at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. She has been a faculty member with the college for more than a decade, currently teaching as an associate professor of theology. Her scholarship integrates academic biblical scholarship with Benedictine monastic tradition.

Dr. Petrany is a graduate of Marshall University in West Virginia, where she majored in philosophy. She holds a master’s degree in systematic theology and a Ph.D. in biblical studies/Hebrew Bible from Fordham University in New York.

Carrie McDermott has joined the University of Arkansas faculty as the George M. and Boyce W. Billingsley Endowed Chair in Nursing and executive director of the Eleanor Mann School of Nursing. She comes to her new role from Emory University in Atlanta, where she was corporate director of academic practice integration and partnerships at the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing. Earlier in her tenure with Emory, she was director of nurse residency programs.

Dr. McDermott holds a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Rockhurst University in Missouri, a master’s degree in nursing from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and a Ph.D. in nursing from the University of Colorado Denver.

Shelagh A. Gallagher has been named the Jody and Layton Smith Professor of Gifted Education and Talent Development and executive director of the Center for Gifted Education at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. Her appointment marks a return to the college, where she previously served as associate director for grants and contracts at the Center for Gifted Education. More recently, she was director of the Office of Gifted and Talented Education at the University of North Texas.

Dr. Gallagher received her bachelor’s degree in psychology and Ph.D. in special education and gifted education from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Doreen Keller is the new Sue Chandler Endowed Professor in Education at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington. In 2013, she joined the university as a visiting professor and was appointed to the full-time faculty two years later. Currently, she serves as an associate professor for graduate studies in education and executive director of the master’s degree program in teaching.

Dr. Keller holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Washington, a master’s degree in teaching from Gonzaga University in Spokane, and a doctorate in teacher leadership from Washington State University.

Dorsey Wanless has been named the Dr. Kenneth M. Hollenbaugh Endowed Professor in Economic Geology at Boise State University in Idaho. Currently serving as chair of the university’s department of geosciences, she studies the evolution of magmas in submarine settings, including mid-ocean ridges and ocean islands. Her research also focuses on understanding the role of magmatism in continental rifting.

Dr. Wanless received her bachelor’s degree in geology from Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, a master’s degree in geology and geophysics from the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, and Ph.D in geological sciences from the University of Florida.

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