Endowed Faculty Appointments for Four Women Scholars

April Mayes has been named the Warren Finney Day History Professor at Pomona College in California. She has been a faculty member in the college’s history department for nearly two decades, currently serving as an associate dean and coordinator of Latin American Studies. She is the author of The Mulatto Republic: Class, Race, and Dominican National Identity (University Press of Florida, 2015).

Dr. Mayes received her bachelor’s degree from Pomona College and Ph.D. in history from the University of Michigan.

Emilie Townes has been named the Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Religion and Black Studies at Boston University. She most recently served as the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Chair in Ethics and Society and University Distinguished Professor of Womanist Ethics and Society at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Her academic expertise in religion, woman’s studies, and Black studies led her to authoring her book, Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

Dr. Townes holds a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree, and a doctor of ministry degree from the University of Chicago. She earned a Ph.D. in religion in society and personality from Northwestern University in Illinois.

Jane Carlton has been named the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Malaria Genomics and Global Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Last year, she joined the university as director of the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute. She currently holds teaching appointments in the department of molecular microbiology and immunology and the department of biomedical engineering.

Dr. Carlton holds a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences and a Ph.D. in genetics from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

Emily Huff has been appointed as the Patricia “Pat” Layton Endowed Director of the Wood Utilization + Design Institute at Clemson University in South Carolina. She currently serves as an associate professor of human dimensions of forestry at Michigan State University. In addition to her faculty position, she also serves as co-editor-in-chief of the Society & Natural Resources journal and president of the Michigan Forest Association.

Dr. Huff is a graduate of Brandies University in Massachusetts, where she double-majored in environmental studies and music composition. She holds a master’s degree in natural resources science and management from the University of Minnesota and a Ph.D. in forestry from the University of Maine.