Four Women Scholars Who Have Been Named to University Dean Positions

Tejal Desai was named dean of the College of Engineering at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, effective September 1. An expert in applying micro- and nanoscale technologies to create new ways to deliver medicine to targeted sites in the human body, Dr. Desai is a professor and a former longtime chair of the department of bioengineering and therapeutic sciences at the University of California San Francisco. In 1998, she became the first faculty hire in the University of Illinois at Chicago’s newly formed department of bioengineering. She joined the Boston University faculty in 2002 before moving to the University of California, San Francisco in 2005.

Dr. Desai is a graduate of Brown University. She holds a Ph.D. from a combined program of the Berkeley and San Francisco campuses of the University of California.

Amy Tillerson-Brown, a professor of history, is the new dean of the Mary Baldwin College for Women at Mary Baldwin University in Staunton, Virginia. She joined the faculty at the university in 2004. Her most recent scholarly research analyses the activism of Black women in Prince Edward County before and during the public school crisis of the 1950s and 60s.

Professor Tillerson-Brown holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Virginia Tech. She earned a Ph.D. at Morgan State University in Baltimore.

Susan Sell was appointed dean of graduate and interdisciplinary studies at North Dakota State University in Fargo. She was associate dean for research and graduate studies in the College of Health and Human Services at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She is a tenured full professor of bioinformatics and genomics.

Dr. Sell is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, where she majored in genetics. She holds a Ph.D. in cellular, viral, and molecular biology from the University of Utah.

Chandrika Johnson has been appointed as the interim dean of the College of Education at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina. Dr. Johnson is a professor of health education in the department of health, physical, and secondary education at the university.

Dr. Johnson holds a bachelor’s degree in community health education from the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. She earned a master of public health degree in community health education from the University of Tennessee and a  Ph.D. in health education from Southern Illinois University Carbondale.