New Duties for Five Women Faculty Members at Major Universities

Deborah A. Thomas, a professor of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, will be taking on new duties as the editor-in-chief of the journal American Anthropologist, the flagship publication of the American Anthropological Association. She is the author of Exceptional Violence: Embodied Citizenship in Transnational Jamaica (Duke University Press, 2011) and Modern Blackness: Nationalism, Globalization, and The Politics of Culture in Jamaica (Duke University Press, 2004).

Professor Thomas is a graduate of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in anthropology from New York University.

Ruqaiijah A. Yearby, the first tenured African American woman faculty member at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland, has been given the additional responsibility as the law school’s inaugural associate dean of institutional diversity and inclusiveness. Professor Yearby joined the faculty at the law school in 2011. Earlier she taught at the University at Buffalo and Loyola University in Chicago.

Professor Yearby is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the Georgetown University Law Center. She also holds a master of public health degree from Johns Hopkins University.

Marta Elena Esquilin was appointed assistant professor of professional practice in American studies on the Newark campus of Rutgers University in New Jersey. She will also serve as associate dean of the Honors Living-Learning Community at the university. She has been serving as director of intercultural resources and social justice programs at Columbia University.

Esquilin is a graduate of the University of Vermont, where she majored in sociology. She holds a master’s degree in higher education administration from Teachers College at Columbia University.

Ellen Pader, associate professor of regional planning at the University of Massachusetts, has been given the additional duty as interim director of the office of Civic Engagement and Service-Learning. She will serve in this role through August.

Dr. Pader is a graduate of Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, where she majored in art history and English. She holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Cambridge in England.

Catherine F. Cahill, associate professor of atmospheric chemistry at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks has been given the additional responsibility as director of the Alaska Center for Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration. She joined the faculty at the university in 1998.

Dr. Cahill is a graduate of the University of California, Davis, where she majored in applied physics. She holds a master’s degree from the University of Washington and a Ph.D. in atmospheric sciences from the University of Nevada, Reno.