Five Women Academics Who Have Been Appointed to Endowed Chairs at Major Universities

Irith Pomeranz was named the Cadence Professor in the Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Dr. Pomeranz, who came to Purdue as a full professor in 2000, is a leading researcher in the field of testing and diagnosis of integrated circuits.

Professor Pomeranz holds bachelor’s and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering from Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.

Isabel Escobar, a professor of chemical engineering, now holds the Chellgren Chair and is the director of the Chellgren Center for Undergraduate Excellence at the Univerity of Kentucky. Dr. Escobar has been a University of Kentucky faculty member since 2015. Earlier, she taught at the University of Toledo in Ohio.

Professor Escobar holds a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree, and a Ph.D.s. all in environmental engineering and all from the University of Central Florida.

Emily Wakild was appointed to the Cecil D. Andrus Endowed Chair for Environment and Public Lands at Boise State University in Idaho. Dr. Wakild joined the faculty in the department of history in 2012. Earlier, she taught at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Professor Wakild earned a bachelor’s in history and politics from Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in Latin American history from the University of Arizona.

Cynthia Wolberger has been named the inaugural recipient of the Brown Advisory Colleagues Professorship in Scientific Innovation in the School of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. She has taught at Johns Hopkins since 1991.

Dr. Wolberger received her undergraduate degree from Cornell University and earned her Ph.D. at Harvard University.

Roxane Gay was appointed to the Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in media, culture, and feminist studies at Rutgers University in New Jersey. She has been a visiting professor at Yale Univerity and earlier served on the faculty at Eastern Illinois University and Purdue University. She is the author or editor of several books including Bad Feminist (Harper, 2014).

Dr. Gay is a graduate of Norwich University in Vermont. She earned a master’s degree in creative writing at the University of Nebraska and a Ph.D. in rhetoric and technical communication from Michigan Technological University