The City University of New York has announced that five women with full or joint appointments at the university’s Graduate Center have been named Distinguished Professors — the highest faculty classification at CUNY. The appointments recognize faculty members known nationally and internationally for their exceptional contributions to scholarship and teaching.
Colette Daiute is a Distinguished Professor of psychology, educational psychology, urban education, interactive technology, and pedagogy. Her research focuses on interrelated social, cognitive, and emotional developments of children, youth, and adults across global systems of adversity, such as displacement, political violence, cultural clashes, and economic inequality. She is the author of several books, including Human Development and Political Violence (Cambridge University Press, 2010). Dr. Daiute is a graduate of Syracuse University, where she majored in Romance languages and literature. She holds a master’s degree in Spanish language and literature and a doctorate in applied linguistics and developmental psychology from Columbia University.
Cindi Katz is a Distinguished Professor of Earth and environmental sciences, psychology, women’s and gender studies, and American studies. She also serves as the deputy executive officer of Earth and environmental sciences. Her research addresses social reproduction and the production of space, place, and nature; the consequences of global economic restructuring for everyday life; children and the environment; and the intertwined spatialities of homeland and home-based security. She is the author of several books, including Growing Up Global: Economic Restructuring and Children’s Everyday Lives (University of Minnesota Press, 2004). Dr. Katz holds bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in geography, all from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Jill Bargonetti-Chavarria is a Distinguished Professor of biochemistry and biology. She serves as chair of the molecular, cellular, and developmental biology subprogram of the Ph.D. program in biology at the Graduate Center and as a professor of biological sciences at Hunter College. Her research is focused on signal transduction, cancer, cell division and death, gene expression, and regulation. Dr. Bargonetti-Chavarria earned her bachelor’s degree at SUNY College at Purchase and her Ph.D. at New York University. She did postdoctoral work at Columbia University.
Ramona Hernández is a Distinguished Professor of sociology and international migration studies at the City College of New York and the Graduate Center. She serves as the director of the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute. Dr. Hernández’s research focuses on the migration of Dominican people to the United States and their socioeconomic conditions after resettlement. A graduate of Lehman College of the CUNY System, Dr. Hernández earned a master’s degree in Latin American and Caribbean studies from New York University and a Ph.D. in sociology from the City University of New York.
Núria Rodríguez-Planas is a Distinguished Professor of economics at Queens College and the Graduate Center. She joined the Queens College faculty in 2012 after teaching at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in Spain. Her research is focused on labor economics, education economics, cultural economics, and European labor markets. Dr. Rodríguez-Planas holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and business administration from the Universitat de Barcelona and a Ph.D. in economics from Boston University.