New Assignments for 10 Women Faculty Members at Colleges and Universities

Sarah Matsumoto has joined the faculty of the Willamette University College of Law in Salem, Oregon. For the last three years, Professor Matsumoto has been a clinical teaching fellow at the Environmental Law Clinic of the Sturm College of Law at the University of Denver.

Professor Matsumoto is a graduate of the University of Washington, where she majored in political science and communication. She earned her juris doctorate at the University of Seattle and added a master’s degree in law from the University of Denver.

Muriel Poston, a national leader in science education and research who served on the faculty at Howard University for 20 years, has joined Claremont McKenna College in California as vice president of strategic initiatives.

Dr. Poston earned a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles. She also holds a juris doctorate from the University of Maryland at Baltimore.

Patricia L. Clark, the Rev. John Cardinal O’Hara Professor of Chemistry and director of the Biophysics Instrumentation Core Facility at the University of Notre Dame, has been given the added duties of associate vice president for research. She has been on the Notre Dame faculty since 2001.

Dr. Clark is a graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she majored in chemistry. She holds a Ph.D. in molecular biophysics from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

V. Constanza Ocampo-Raeder was promoted to associate professor of Latin American studies and granted tenure at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. She joined the faculty at the liberal arts college in 2013. Dr. Ocampo-Raeder’s teaching focuses on environmental anthropology, Latin American ethnography, and food studies. She taught at the University of Maine from 2006 to 2013.

Dr. Ocampo-Raeder holds a bachelor of arts degree in biology from Grinnell College in Iowa. She earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in anthropology from Stanford University.

Marianne Wanamaker, associate professor of economics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has been appointed executive director of the university’s Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy. Dr. Wanamaker’s research interests include labor economics, education, American economic history, and demography.

Dr. Wanamaker is a 2001 graduate of Vanderbilt University in Nashville with degrees in mathematics and economics. She earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in economics from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

Shannon Clowney Johnson, an assistant professor of languages and letters at Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas, was given the added assignment as associate vice president for academic affairs at the college. She began her career at the college in 2012 as an instructor.

Dr. Clowney Johnson is a graduate of Wellesley College in Massachusetts, where she majored in Africana studies. She earned a master of public administration degree and a master’s degree in technical writing from the University of Arkansas at Little and a Ph.D. in interdisciplinary leadership studies for community and social change from the University of Central Arkansas.

Susan Sullivan, who teaches in the School of Food and Agriculture at the University of Maine, has been given the added responsibilities of associate dean for academics of the College of Natural Sciences, Forestry, and Agriculture at the university.

Prior to coming to the University of Maine in 1998, Dr. Sullivan was a clinical dietitian at Massachusetts General Hospital. She holds a doctor of science degree in nutrition from Boston University.

Christy Ashley, an associate professor of marketing in the College of Business at the University of Rhode Island, assumed the role of associate dean for undergraduate programs in the College of Business. Before joining the faculty in 2015, Dr. Ashley served as an associate professor of marketing and research fellow at East Carolina University in Grenville, North Carolina.

Dr. Ashley earned a Ph.D. in marketing at the University of Rhode Island in 2006.

Melody Brown Burkins, an adjunct professor of environmental studies at Dartmouth College, was named director of the college’s Institute for Arctic Studies. She has been serving as the associate director for programs and research at the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth.

Burkins grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska, and earned her bachelor’s degree in geology from Yale. She earned a master’s degree in earth sciences and a Ph.D. in earth sciences from Dartmouth College.

Safiya Sinclair was hired as an associate professor of English at Arizona State University. She has been serving as a postdoctoral research associate in the department of literary arts at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

A native of Montego Bay, Jamaica, Dr. Sinclair is a graduate of Bennington College in Vermont, where she majored in English literature. She earned a master’s degree in poetry from the University of Virginia and a Ph.D. in literature and creative writing from the University of Southern California.