Four Women Stepping Down From Key Higher Education Posts

Sue DeWine, president of Hanover College in Indiana, has announced that she will retire at the end of the of 2014-15 academic year. She will have served as the college’s 15th president for eight years. Before becoming president of Hanover College, Dr. DeWine was provost at Marietta College in Ohio and earlier served on the faculty at Ohio University for 15 years.

President DeWine holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. She earned a Ph.D. in interpersonal and organizational communication and consulting psychology from Indiana University.

Carla Sanderson is stepping down from her post as provost and executive vice president for strategic initiatives at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee. She has been a faculty member at the university for 32 years and will continue to serve as a tenured professor of nursing.

Professor Sanderson is a graduate of Union University. She holds a master degree from the University of Tennessee and a doctorate in nursing science from the University of Florida.

Nancy Mergler, who has served for almost 20 years as provost and senior vice president at the University of Oklahoma at Norman, will step down from her post on June 1. Dr. Mergler will remain on the faculty at the university and teach in the psychology department.

Mergler is a graduate of William Smith College in Geneva, New York. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in developmental psychology from Syracuse University.

Connie Vinita Dowell, the inaugural dean of libraries at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, has announced that she will retire on July 31. She has served as dean since 2009. Previously, she was dean of the library and information access at San Diego State University in California. Earlier in her career, Dowell was chief information officer and vice president for information services at Connecticut College.

Dowell holds a master of library science degree from Peabody College at Vanderbilt University.