Lerna Ekmekcioglu is the new head of the history section at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Ekmekcioglu, the McMillan-Stewart Professor of History, has been an MIT faculty member for the past 15 years. From 2022 to 2025, she served as director of the program in women’s and gender studies. As a historian, she focuses on the modern Middle East, the Ottoman Empire, Türkiye, Armenian history, gender, feminism, genocide, and minority politics.
Dr. Ekmekcioglu holds a bachelor’s degree from BoÄŸaziçi University in Istanbul and a Ph.D. from New York University.
Daniela Arias-Rotondo was awarded tenure and promoted to the rank of associate professor at Kalamazoo College in Michigan. Dr. Arias-Rotondo currently holds the Roger F. and Harriet G. Varney Endowed Chair in Natural Science and teaches courses in inorganic chemistry, molecular structure, and chemical reactivity. Her research centers on photoactive complexes of first-row transition metals.
Dr. Arias-Rotondo holds a bachelor’s degree from the Universidad de Buenos Aires in Argentina and a Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry from Michigan State University.
Amanda Deliman was awarded tenure and promoted to associate professor of early childhood and elementary literacy education at Utah State University’s campus in Salt Lake City. A faculty member since 2020, Dr. Deliman teaches courses in the elementary and early childhood education teacher preparation programs as well as graduate courses for master’s and doctoral students in the literacy concentration. As a scholar, she studies children’s literature as a tool for learning, social-emotional learning, teacher learning and teacher education, and drama in education.
Dr. Deliman is a graduate of Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where she majored in elementary education. She holds a master’s degree in educational leadership and policy studies and a Ph.D. in literacy, culture, and language education from Indiana University.
Kristine Marceau is the new associate dean for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars in the College of Health and Human Sciences at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. A faculty member since 2017, she is professor of human development and family science and co-director of the Methodology Center at Purdue. Her research expertise spans gene-environment interplay, prenatal experiences, physiological responses to stress, hormone-behavior associations, pubertal development, parenting and parent-child relationships, developmental psychopathology, and substance use.
Dr. Marceau is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she double-majored in psychology and philosophy. She holds master’s and doctoral degrees in developmental psychology from Pennsylvania State University.
Nell Gabiam was selected to serve as interim chair of the department of world languages and cultures in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University. Dr. Gabiam, an associate professor of anthropology and political science, has been serving as the department’s senior associate chair. She has a wide-range of scholarly interests, including Palestinian studies, migration and refugee studies, humanitarian and development studies, transnational belonging and governance, and peace and conflict studies.
Dr. Gabiam holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley.
Danielle Battisti is the new associate dean of social sciences, humanities, and academic affairs for the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. A faculty member since 2012, Dr. Battisti previously served as chair of the department of history. She is an expert in immigration and ethnic history, and has published widely on the evolution of U.S. immigration laws and policy.
Dr. Battisti is a graduate of Colgate University in Hamilton, New York. She holds a Ph.D. in history from the University at Buffalo within the State University of New York System.
Elizabeth J.A. Siwo-Okundi has joined the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary faculty as an assistant professor of congregational studies and leadership. Most recently, Dr. Siwo-Okundi was a visiting researcher with the Boston University African Studies Center. As a scholar, she specializes in the interdisciplinary study of the “small voice” — the unnoticed and unnamed, silenced and marginalized, rejected and neglected voices within Biblical texts and social contexts, particularly orphans, widows, immigrants, and victims of violence.
Dr. Siwo-Okundi is a graduate of Denison University in Granville, Ohio, where she majored in Black studies. She earned a master of theology degree from Harvard University and both a master of divinity degree and a Ph.D. in practical theology and homiletics from Boston University.
Taryn Okuma was appointed director of the honors program at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Dr. Okuma, a professor in the department of English, has been a faculty member with the university since 2009. A specialist in contemporary British fiction, she focuses her research on twentieth- and twenty-first-century British literature and culture, composition and pedagogy, twentieth-century war literature, and memoir.
Dr. Okuma is a graduate of Scripps College in Claremont, California. She earned her master’s and doctoral degrees in English from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Jennifer Ellis was promoted from interim chair to permanent chair of the McMahon School of Business at Cameron University in Lawton, Oklahoma. Professor Ellis has been a Cameron University faculty member for more than two decades. Outside of academia, she has extensive experience in executive corporate leadership, including service as president and CEO of Cosmetic Speciality Labs, Inc.
Professor Ellis is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma, where she majored in liberal studies. She earned her MBA from George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and is currently pursuing a doctorate in business administration from the University of Michigan-Flint.