Universities Offer New Assignments to Eight Women Scholars

Joan Donovan, a renowned expert in online misinformation and disinformation campaigns, has joined the faculty at Boston University as an assistant professor in the College of Communication. Dr. Donovan was most recently research director of the Technology and Social Change Research Project at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. She is co-author of Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022).

Dr. Donovan earned a doctorate in sociology and science studies at the University of California, San Diego. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics.

Shanen M. Sherrer was recently promoted to associate professor of biochemistry with tenure at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. Her research is focused on studying the biological outcomes of DNA damage caused by environmental sources.

Dr. Sherrer is a graduate of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where she majored in biochemistry. She holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Ohio State University.

Sherry Hartnett is the inaugural director of the Office of Workforce Development at the University of West Florida. She is a professor of marketing and leadership at the university. Dr. Harnett is the founding chair of the university’s Women in Leadership Conference.

Dr. Harnett is a graduate of Towson University in Maryland, where she majored in business administration. She holds a master’s degree in management from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and a doctorate in business administration from Georgia State University.

Daphne Penn has joined the faculty of Peabody College of education and human development at Vanderbilt University in Nashville as an assistant professor of education policy and inequality. Her research aims to understand and address the root causes of educational inequality by examining schools as microcosms of society. Her forthcoming book, The American Dream Deferred, examines the politics of immigration-related demographic change when unaccompanied minors from Guatemala are introduced into a historic African American high school in the U.S. South.

Dr. Penn earned a bachelor’s degree in human and organizational development from Vanderbilt University. She holds a master’s degree in sociology from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, and a Ph.D. in education from Harvard University.

The Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Harvard University announces the appointment of Kanaka Rajan as its first faculty member. She will also serve as a member of the faculty in the department of neurobiology at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Rajan comes to Harvard from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, where she was a tenured associate professor in the department of neuroscience and the Friedman Brain Institute.

Dr. Rajan is a graduate of Anna University in Tamil Nadu, India. She earned a master’s degree at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, and a Ph.D. at Columbia University.

Rachel Eells is the new interim director of the School of Education at the University of Arkansas Little Rock. Earlier, Dr. Eells served as vice president for academic affairs and a professor of education at Concordia College New York.

Dr. Eells earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary and special education from Concordia College in Chicago followed by a master’s degree in gifted and talented education from the University of Arkansas Little Rock. She holds a Ph.D. in educational psychology from Loyola University Chicago.

Tesa Leonce, an associate professor of accounting at Columbus State University in Georgia, was given the added duties as associate dean of the Turner College of Business and Technology at the university. Prior to joining the faculty at Columbus State in 2014, Dr. Leonce taught at Wake Forest University, Eastern Illinois University, and the University of Wyoming.

Dr. Leonce holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration with a specialization in finance and business computer information systems from Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas. She earned a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wyoming.

Maria Carreon is a new associate professor of chemical engineering at the University of Arkansas. She was a faculty member at the University of Tulsa, South Dakota School of Mines & Technology, and most recently, at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Dr. Carreon’s research includes plasma catalysis, production of platform chemicals, and materials synthesis and design.

Dr. Carreon completed her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemical engineering at Universidad Michoacana in Mexico and holds a doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of Louisville.