Eight Women Scholars Who Are Taking on New Faculty Assignments

Allison Carruth was appointed professor of American studies and the High Meadows Environmental Institute at Princeton University in New Jersey. She specializes in environmental humanities. Professor Carruth comes to Princeton from the University of California-Los Angeles, where she was hired as an assistant professor of English in 2012 and named associate professor in 2014. Carruth served as the faculty chair of UCLA’s food studies minor and the founding faculty director of the Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies in UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.

Dr. Carruth is a graduate of Grinnell College in Iowa. She holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University. She is the author of Global Appetites: American Power and the Literature of Food (Cambridge University Press, 2013).

Houri Berberian, the Meghrouni Family Presidential Chair in Armenian Studies at the University of California, Irvine, was appointed director of the university’s new Center for Armenian Studies. Professor Berberian is the author of Roving Revolutionaries: Armenians and the Connected Revolutions in the Russian, Iranian, and Ottoman Worlds (University of California Press, 2019).

Dr. Berberian earned a Ph.D. in history at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Sarah Williams, an associate professor of technology and urban planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was appointed director of the Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism at the university. Williams joined the faculty in 2014 and directs the Civic Data Design Lab and has chaired the Institute’s new undergraduate program in urban science.

Williams is a graduate of Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, where she majored in geography and history. She earned a master’s degree in city planning at MIT.

Marie-Carmelle Elie has been named chair of the department of emergency medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine. Dr. Elie has been serving as an associate professor in the Division of Critical Care at the University of Florida’s College of Medicine.

Dr. Elie earned a bachelor’s degree at Columbia University and her medical degree from the Downstate Medical Center of the State University of New York in Brooklyn.

Lindsay Mayka, was promoted to associate professor of government at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. She was also granted tenure. Her research centers on the relationship between civil society and public institutions in Latin America. Dr. Mayka is the author of Building Participatory Institutions in Latin America: Reform Coalitions and Institutional Change (Cambridge Univerity Press, 2019).

Dr. Mayka is a graduate of Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. She holds a master of public policy degree and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Tia N. Dumas has been appointed associate dean of the Graduate School at Clemson University in South Carolina. She was assistant dean for professional development and inclusive excellence at the Graduate School. She holds a clinical faculty appointment in the department of educational and organizational leadership development.

Dr. Dumas earned her Ph.D. in counseling and personnel services at the University of Louisville.

Kari Smith was named director of the School of Architecture and Design at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Professor Smith has been a faculty member in the School of Architecture and Design for 13 years and has served as interim director since 2019.

Professor Smith is a graduate of Arizona State University. She earned a master of architecture degree from Rice University in Houston, Texas.

Twanda Young, who recently retired as a brigadier general from the U.S. Army, was named executive-in-residence at Bowie State University in Maryland. At the time of her retirement, she was deputy commanding general for the Army’s Human Resources Command, the nation’s largest human resources organization. She will teach organizational leadership to students in the College of Business.

General Young is a graduate of Claflin University in South Carolina. She holds a master’s degree in adult education and a master’s degree in executive development from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. General Young also earned a master’s degree in strategic studies from the U.S. Army War College.