Five Women Scholars Who Have Been Named to New Positions in the Academic World

Nasia Safdar, an infectious disease specialist and professor of medicine in the School of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Wisconsin, was given the added duties as associate dean for clinical trials and the research director of the new Wisconsin Medicine Institute for Clinical Trials.

Dr. Safdar earned her medical degree at Aga Khan University Medical College in Lahore, Pakistan. She holds a master’s degree in public health science and a Ph.D. in clinical research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Julie Wolter, a professor in the School of Speech, Language, Hearing and Occupational Sciences at the University of Montana, was given the added duties of associate vice provost for innovation and online learning. Before joining the University of Montana faculty in 2015, the Billings native served 10 years on the faculty at Utah State University, including four years as chair of its Speech-Language Pathology Division.

Dr. Wolter holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in speech-language pathology from Western Washington University. She earned a Ph.D. from Wichita State University in Kansas.

Janet Chen was promoted to full professor of history at Princeton University in New Jersey. She is a historian of modern China, specializing in the twentieth century, and joined the faculty of the Princeton history department in 2006. Professor Chen is the author of Guilty of Indigence: The Urban Poor in China, 1900-1953 (Princeton University Press, 2012).

Dr. Chen is a graduate of Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where she majored in history and Asian studies. She holds two master’s degrees and a Ph.D. in history from Yale University.

Jennifer Karas Montez was appointed a University Professor at Syracuse University in New York. She is a professor of sociology, director of the Center for Aging and Policy Studies, and co-director of the Policy, Place, and Population Health Lab in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. Dr. Karas Montez joined the faculty in 2015 after teaching at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

Professor Karas Montez holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and a master’s degree in statistics from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. She earned a master’s degree in sociology at the University of Houston and a Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Texas at Austin.

Kathy Yelick, the Robert S. Pepper Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, is taking on additional duties as vice chancellor for research. Dr. Yelick joined the faculty at the university in 1991. She was only the second woman to be hired to the faculty in the university’s computer science division.

Professor Yelick earned bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.