Mary Frances Luce was promoted from interim dean to permanent dean of the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Dr. Luce, the Robert A. Ingram Professor of Business Administration, is the first alumna of the school to serve as its dean. A Duke faculty member since 2004, she previously served as Fuqua’s senior associate dean for faculty and as associate vice president for Duke’s office of research and innovation. Dr. Luce’s research centers around emotion and decision-making, particularly in health contexts.
A graduate of Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, Dr. Luce earned her Ph.D. in business administration with a concentration in marketing from Duke.
Gabrielle Rachael Thomas has been named dean and president of the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University. She will also serve as associate dean of Yale Divinity School. Dr. Thomas’s new role marks a return to Yale, where she previously taught from 2019 to 2021. Currently, Dr. Thomas is an associate professor of early Christianity and Anglican studies at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology. While most of her scholarship has focused on early Christianity, she also studies the implications of historical theology for today’s church and women’s experiences in ministry and the academy.
Dr. Thomas holds a bachelor’s degree in classics from the University of Bristol and a Ph.D. in historical theology from the University of Nottingham, both in England.
Karen Drenkard has been appointed acting divisional dean of the School of Nursing in the College of Public Health at George Mason University in Virginia. Most recently, Dr. Drenkard served as a professor and associate dean of clinical practice and community engagement at the George Washington University School of Nursing. She is president of Drenkard Healthcare Consulting, where she helps healthcare systems, schools of nursing, technology companies, and national organizations with strategic planning, academic-practice partnership development, quality management, and leadership advancement.
Dr. Drenkard is a graduate of Russell Sage College in Troy, New York. She earned a master’s degree in nursing administration from Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia, and a Ph.D. in nursing administration, policy, and ethics from George Mason University.
Nicole Kong is associate vice provost and dean of Purdue Libraries and the School of Information Studies at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. A faculty member since 2012, Dr. Kong has served as associate dean for research at Purdue Libraries and the School of Information Studies for the past five years. Her interdisciplinary research centers on geo-spatial information science, data stewardship, and digital scholarship.
Dr. Kong received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Peking University in Beijing, China. She holds a Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University.
Natalie Bayer was appointed dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. Dr. Bayer, a professor of history, previously served as the college’s associate dean for student affairs. A scholar of European and Russian history, she is the author of Initiating the Millennium: The Avignon Society and Illuminism in Europe (Oxford University Press, 2020). Later this year, she is slated to publish a Russian-language edition of Initiating the Millennium, as well as a new monograph, Brotherhood and Fatherland: Freemasonry and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Russia.
A graduate of Moscow State University in Russia, Dr. Bayer received her Ph.D. in European intellectual history from Rice University in Houston, Texas.