Five Women Taking on New Faculty Responsibilities at Leading Colleges and Universities

Laura Genik, an academic specialist for teaching in the College of Engineering at Michigan State University has been appointed director of Applied Engineering Sciences at the university. She has been on the faculty at Michigan State since 2007.

Dr. Genik holds a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree, and a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Michigan State University.

Marta Ptaszynska, the Helen B. and Frank L. Sulzberger Professor of Music at the University of Chicago, was given the additional responsibility of artistic director of Contempo, the university’s contemporary music collective. Comtempo was founded 50 years ago as the Contemporary Chamber Players.

A native of Poland, Professor Ptaszynska joined the faculty at the University of Chicago in 1998.

Dianne H.B. Welsh, the Hayes Distinguished Professor of Entrepreneurship in the School of Business and Economics at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, has been appointed to the Fulbright-Hall Distinguished Chair in Entrepreneurship for Central Europe. As chair, she will spend several months this spring teaching at the Vienna University for Economics and Business and the University of Bratislava in Slovakia.

Professor Welsh is a graduate of the University of Iowa. She holds a master’s degree in psychology from Emporia State University in Kansas and a Ph.D. in business administration from the University of Nebraska.

Brinda Sarathy, an associate professor of environmental analysis at Pitzer College in Claremont, California, has been given the additional responsibility of director of the college’s Robert Redford Conservancy for Southern California Sustainability. Dr. Sarathy is the author of Pineros: Latino Labor and the Changing Face of Forestry in the Pacific Northwest (University of British Columbia Press, 2012).

Dr. Sarathy is a graduate of McGill University in Montreal. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in environmental science, policy, and management from the University of California, Berkeley.

Margaret Satterthwaite, a professor of clinical law and director of the Global Justice Clinic at the New York University School of Law, has been given the additional responsibility as director of the new Robert L. Bernstein Institute for Human Rights at the university.

Professor Satterthwaite is a graduate of New School University and holds a master’s degree in literature and cultural studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is a magna cum laude graduate of the New York University School of Law.