A Trio of Women Scholars Appointed to Named Professorships

Alanna Schepartz was appointed the Sterling Professor of Chemistry at Yale University. She joined the faculty at Yale in 1988 and has been a leading advocate of increasing the number of women in science. In 2016, Professor Schepartz was named editor-in-chief of the journal Biochemistry.

Professor Schepartz’s research focuses on understanding how macromolecular interactions control sophisticated biological processes such as information transfer, intracellular trafficking, and compartmentalization. She is a graduate of the University at Albany of the State University of New York System and holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University in New York City.

Barbara L. Ludlow was named the Chester E. & Helen B. Derrick Endowed Professor in the College of Education and Human Services at West Virginia University. Professor Ludlow joined the faculty at the university on a full-time basis in 1983. She was granted tenure in 1995. For the past 12 years, Dr. Ludlow has chaired the special education department at the university.

Dr. Ludlow is a graduate of St. John’s University in New York, where she majored in classical languages. She holds a master’s degree in classical languages from Cornell University and a second master’s degree in education from the University of Delaware. Professor Ludlow earned a doctorate in special education at West Virginia University.

Mary Kelly, the noted conceptual artist and feminist scholar, was appointed the Judge Widney Professor at the Roski School of Art and Design at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. She is the first woman to hold this endowed professorship. Professor Kelly was a Distinguished Professor of Art and Critical Theory at the University of California, Los Angeles. She served on the UCLA faculty for 21 years.

Professor Kelly is a native of Iowa. She studied painting in Florence, Italy, then taught art at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. In 1968, she moved to London to study at St. Martinʼs School of Art. Among her scholarly works are Imaging Desire (MIT Press, 1996).