Four Women Academics Who Are Leaving Their Posts

Ann La Berge was named associate professor emerita of science and technology studies at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. She has served on the Virginia Tech faculty since 1981. Dr. La Berge’s research focused on nineteenth-century French public health and medicine.

A graduate of Middlebury College in Vermont, Dr. La Berge earned two master’s degrees at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and a Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee.

Polly Knudson, director of research and development at the University of Idaho, has announced that she will step down from her post on January 2, 2015. She has served on the staff of the Office of Research and Economic Development for the past 11 years.

Knudson, who recently earned a master’s degree in forensic accounting, is forming her own forensic accounting and fraud investigation firm. She will also serve as an adjunct professor of accounting at Lewis Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho.

Susan Roth, vice provost for interdisciplinary studies and professor of neurosciences and psychology at Duke University, has announced that she will retire on June 30, 2015. Dr. Roth joined the faculty at Duke in 1973 as an assistant professor.

Dr. Roth is a graduate of Barnard College in New York City. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in psychology from Northwestern University.

Deborah K. Fitzgerald has announced that she will step down as dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on July 1, 2015. She has served as dean since 2007. Dr. Fitzgerald will stay on at MIT as a professor of the history of technology. She first joined the MIT faculty in 1988.

Dr. Fitzgerald is a graduate of Iowa State University and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author Every Farm a Factory: The Industrial Ideal in American Agriculture (Yale University Press, 2003)