Nine Women Faculty Members Who Are Taking on New Duties

Weiping Wu, professor of urban planning at Columbia University in New York City, has been assigned the added duties of vice provost for academic programs, effective September 1. Professor Wu came to Columbia in 2016 from Tufts University in Massachusetts, where she was chair of the department of urban and environmental policy and planning. She is the author or editor of nine books including China Urbanizing: Impacts and Transitions (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022).

Dr. Wu earned a bachelor’s degree in architecture and a master’s degree in urban planning from Tsinghua University in China. She holds a Ph.D. in urban planning and policy development from Rutgers University in New Jersey.

Melynda Price will join the University of Michigan this fall as a professor of women’s and gender studies. She will also be the executive director of the university’s Institute for Research on Women and Gender. Dr. Price has been serving as the John and Joan R. Gaines Professor of Humanities, director of the Gaines Center for Humanities, and the J. David Rosenberg Professor of Law at the University of Kentucky. She also served as director of the African American and Africana Studies program. Professor Price is the author of At the Cross: Race, Religion and Citizenship in the Politics of the Death Penalty (Oxford University Press, 2015).

Dr. Price is a graduate of Prairie View A&M University in Texas, where she majored in physics. She holds a juris doctorate from the University of Texas and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Michigan.

Ihudiya Finda Williams has been appointed as an assistant professor of computer science at Virginia Tech. Her research focuses on digital technology usage among populations with limited resources due to systemic injustices, and she investigates tech-enabled solutions to either expose injustices or identify future alternatives.

Dr. Williams received her bachelor’s degree in information technology from the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. She holds a master’s degree in education from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in information science from the University of Michigan.

Victoria Thompson is the new chair of the School of History and Sociology at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She was an associate professor of history and co-director of the Institute for Humanities Research at Arizona State University. She is the author of The Virtuous Marketplace: Women and Men, Money and Politics in Paris, 1830-1870 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000).

Dr. Thompson holds a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of California, Berkeley. She earned a Ph.D. in history at the University of Pennsylvania.

Sarah Vinson was appointed chair of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta. She has been on the faculty at the medical school for 10 years.

Dr. Vinson received a bachelor’s degree from Florida A&M University. She earned her medical degree from the University of Florida College of Medicine.

Angela Koehler was appointed faculty director of the Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The center was established in 2002 and helps student and faculty researchers bring their new innovative technologies from the lab to the marketplace. Dr. Koehler is an associate professor of biological engineering at MIT.

A member of the MIT faculty since 2014, Dr. Koehler earned a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and molecular biology from Reed College in Portland, Oregon. She holds a Ph.D. in chemistry from Harvard University.

Sherine Gabriel was named executive vice president of Arizona State University Health. Dr. Gabriel is the University Professor of the Future of Health Outcomes and Medicine and chair of the ASU Health Outcomes Design Council. She has served as dean of the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, dean of the Mayo Medical School in Rochester, Minnesota, and president of Rush University in Chicago.

Dr. Gabriel is a graduate of the University of Regina in Saskatchewan and the medical school of the University of Saskatchewan. He also holds a master’s degree in clinical epidemiology from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.

LaDaryl Watkins is a new clinical assistant professor in the nursing program at Mississippi State University-Meridian. She was a family nurse practitioner for the school-based clinics of the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson.

Watkins is a graduate of Tougaloo College in Mississippi. She holds a master’s degree in nursing from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and a master’s degree in health promotion and education from Jackson State University in Mississippi. She is currently studying for a Ph.D. in nursing from the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

Sarah Hetrick is a new assistant professor of saxophone at the University of Arkansas. Hetrick comes to the university from Texas A&M International University, where she taught applied saxophone and woodwind methods.

Dr. Hetrick holds a bachelor’s degree in music education from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She earned a master of music degree and a doctor of musical arts degree in saxophone performance from the University of Texas at Austin.