Six Women Who Have Been Selective to Serve in Higher Education Administrative Positions

Nadine Wong will join the Office for Translation and Commercialization at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, as managing director of licensing and strategic initiatives on January 10, 2022. She has been serving as managing director of the Biointerfaces Institute at the University of Michigan. She has been on the staff at the University of Michigan for 15 years.

Dr. Wong received a bachelor’s degree n chemistry from Whittier College in California. She holds a Ph.D. in chemistry from Stanford University.

Jamilyn Penn has been named interim vice president at Highline College in Des Moines, Washington. She will oversee the college’s Student Services Division. She has been serving as the statewide director of transfer education for the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges.

Dr. Penn earned a bachelor’s degree in English and paralegal studies from James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. She holds a master’s degree in English from Radford University in Virginia and a doctorate in higher education leadership from Northeastern University in Boston.

Stephanie Droker was appointed interim deputy chancellor and chief operating officer for the Peralta Community College District in Oakland, California, effective January 10. She has been serving as the president and chief executive officer of the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges.

Dr. Droker holds a master of public administration degree from California State University, Dominguez Hills. She earned an educational doctorate from California State University, Fresno.

Liudmila Sergeevna Mainzer was appointed director of the Advanced Research Computing Center at the University of Wyoming, effective January 21. She has been serving as a technical program manager at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Dr. Mainzer earned a bachelor’s degree in specialty biophysics from Belarusian State University in Minsk, Belarus. She holds a Ph.D. in biophysics and computational biology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Leslie Rodriguez-McClellon is the new senior vice president of student experience and operations at Saint Augustine’s University in Raleigh, North Carolina. She was chief of staff and executive director for strategic initiatives at Southern University in Shreveport. Earlier, Dr. Rodriguez-McCllellon was president of Rochester Community and Technical College in Minnesota.

Raised in Oklahoma, Dr. Rodriguez-McClellon earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s degree in education from Langston University in Oklahoma. She holds a doctorate in adult learning and leadership from Kansas State University.

Melissa Yuen is the new curator of the Syracuse University Museum of Art. She has been serving as a curator and art historian at the Sheldon Museum of Art on the campus of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Earlier, she was the curatorial fellow for European and American Art to 1900 at the Cantor Arts Center of Stanford University.

Dr. Yuen holds a Ph.D. in art history from Rutgers University in New Jersey, with a specialization in Italian Renaissance and Baroque art.