Four Women Appointed to Dean Positions at U.S. Universities

Carla Swearingen was appointed dean of faculty development and director of the Teaching and Learning Center at John Brown University in Siloam Springs, Arkansas. She is an associate professor of chemistry at the university and has been on the faculty there since 2005.

Dr. Swearingen is a graduate of Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas. She holds a Ph.D. from Loyola University of Chicago.

Michele Gillespie was named Dean of the College at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She will assume her new duties on July 1. Professor Gillespie joined the faculty at Wake Forest in 1999 and was named to an endowed Presidential Chair in 2013.

Dr. Gillespie is the author or co-editor of 12 books including her most recent effort Katherine and R.J. Reynolds: Partners of Fortune in the Making of the New South (University of Georgia Press, 2012). Professor Gillespie is a graduate of Rice University in Houston and holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Princeton University.

Ruby Perry is the new dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine, Nursing, and Applied Health at Tuskegee University in Alabama. She has been serving in the post on an interim basis since June 2014. Before joining the faculty at Tuskegee, she was section chief of radiology in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Michigan State University.

Dr. Perry holds a master’s degree from Michigan State University and a doctorate in veterinary medicine from Tuskegee University.

Vanessa Beasley was named dean of the Martha Rivers Ingram Commons at Vanderbilt University, effective July 1. The Martha Rivers Ingram Commons is a campus within a campus for first-year students at Vanderbilt.

Dr. Beasley joined the faculty in the department of communication studies at Vanderbilt in 2007. She is a 1988 graduate of Vanderbilt University and holds a Ph.D. in speech communication from the University of Texas at Austin.