Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, recently appointed 19 faculty members to endowed chairs. The distinguished faculty members, representing a wide range of fields, were presented with medallions that symbolize attaining their positions that will become part of their official academic regalia.
Six of the 19 scholars named to endowed professorships are women.
Nicole Allen was named to the Lois Autrey Betts Chair in Education and Human Development. She is chair of the department of human and organizational development. Dr. Allen previously served as a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She studies community responses to gender-based violence, cross-sector community collaboration, and systems and organizational change. Dr. Allen is a graduate of Cornell University in New York, where she majored in human development and family studies. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in ecological community psychology from Michigan State University.
Christina Edwards Bailey was appointed to the Eskind Chair in Surgical Education. Before coming to Nashville, Dr. Bailey taught at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Her research focuses on differences in health outcomes in patients with cancer as well as quality of life after cancer treatment. Dr. Bailey is a graduate of Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, where she majored in animal science. She holds a master’s degree in clinical investigations from Vanderbilt University and a medical doctorate from Louisiana State University Health Science Center in Shreveport.
Jennifer Elizabeth Below holds the Mary Phillips Edmonds Gray Chair. She is a geneticist and a professor of medicine at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center. She also directs the Vanderbilt Genetics Institute. Dr. Below’s research interests focus on the development of novel strategies for identifying and confirming genetic risk factors of complex traits such as Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Below is a graduate of Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, where she majored in mathematics. She completed her doctoral degree in human genetics at University of Chicago and a postdoctoral fellowship in genome sciences at University of Washington. She joined the Vanderbilt faculty in 2017.
Misook Chung is the new Valere Potter Menefee Chair in Nursing. Dr. Chung’s work focuses on the dynamic, interdependent relationship between patients and their family caregivers in cardiovascular disease, heart failure, stroke, or dementia with a particular focus on rural caregivers of patients with chronic diseases. Dr Chung holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in nursing from Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South Korea. She earned a Ph.D. at the University of Kentucky.
Melissa Collins Duff was appointed to the Vickie and Thomas Flood Chair in Hearing and Speech Sciences. She is a professor and chair of the department of hearing and speech sciences and has taught at Vanderbilt since 2017. Dr. Duff’s work focuses on the role of the hippocampal memory system in language use and processing, including the study of patients with hippocampal amnesia, traumatic brain injury, and Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Duff is a graduate of Southern Illinois State University Carbondale, where she majored in linguistics and communication disorders. She holds a master’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Ph.D. in speech and hearing science from the University of Illinois.
Alyssa Wise was named to the Margaret Cowan Chair. She is a professor of technology and education in the department of teaching and learning at Peabody College and director of the LIVE Learning Innovation Incubator, an interdisciplinary, university-wide hub for research and innovation in learning technologies. Dr. Wise’s work focuses on the responsible, human-centered design of AI and learning analytics to improve teaching and learning across K–12, higher education, and professional settings. Professor Wise is a graduate of Yale University, where she majored in chemistry. She holds a master’s degree in instructional systems technology and a Ph.D in learning sciences from Indiana University.