A jury of our women and four men found that Alabama State University in Montgomery had allowed an administrator to create a sexually hostile work environment for three women. The women alleged that they were subjected to inappropriate comments about their bodies and clothes and were brushed up against in a narrow filing room. The women also claimed that an administrator made unwanted romantic advances.
The jury also decided that the women were retaliated against after they had filed complaints about the sexual harassment. The women were awarded $1 million for back pay and lost leave time as well as for compensation for emotional pain and mental anguish.
The university stated that it is considering appealing the decision.
From time to time, Women in Academia Report will provide links to online articles that may be of interest to our readers. The links presented direct the reader to articles from many different points of view that deal with issues of women in higher education. The articles selected in no way reflect the views of the editorial board of WIAReport.
Hazel R. O’Leary, president of Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, since 2004, has announced that she will step down at the end of 2012. President O’Leary is staying on through the end of the year through the university’s annual audit and to complete a monitoring report with the university’s accrediting agency. The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools placed Fisk on warning status in 2010 over concerns about the university’s financial health. During President O’Leary’s tenure, the university has been engaged in a long legal battle to sell or lend part of its art collection to raise money to bolster the institution’s finances.
Kathleen Flenniken was named the second poet laureate of the state of Washington. The appointment, which includes an annual stipend from the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities, is supported by Humanities Washington and the Washington State Arts Commission.
Taft College in Taft, California, part of the West Kern Community College District, has announced that Dena Maloney will be the institution’s next president. She is expected to assume her new post on May 1.
Susan Hockfield, the 16th president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has announced that she will step down as president once a successor is found. Dr. Hockfield has served as president of MIT since 2004 and is the first woman to hold the position. She will remain on the faculty at MIT after leaving the presidency as professor of neuroscience in the department of brain and cognitive sciences.
Heather Munroe-Blum, the 16th principal and vice chancellor of McGill University in Montreal, has announced that she will leave her post at the end of the 20012-13 academic year. The position of principal is equivalent to a college presidency in the United States. Dr. Munroe-Blum has led McGill University since 2003. She also serves as a professor in the university’s department of epidemiology, biostatistics, and occupational health.
David J. Skorton, president of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, has issued a statement outlining the university’s goals regarding diversity. In the statement, President Skorton calls for efforts to increase the diversity of the faculty, academic professionals, and administrative staff. He also seeks to strengthen efforts to recruit and graduate a diverse student body, improve opportunities for veterans, and to make the campus more accessible for people with disabilities.
Leading the effort to increase the diversity of the Cornell faculty will be Yael Levitte, who was named associate vice provost for faculty diversity and development. She has been serving as executive director of CU-ADVANCE, an organization that seeks to recruit and retain women in science and engineering fields. She holds a Ph.D. in economic geography from the University of Toronto.
Svitlana Kravchenko, a highly respected authority in environmental and natural resources law and professor at the University of Oregon School of Law, died last week in a hospital in Eugene, Oregon. She was 62 years old.
Colby College in Waterville, Maine, announced that as a result of an internal investigation of a November 2011 incident, which violated the college’s sexual misconduct policy, a dozen students were suspended for a semester or more and two voluntarily withdrew from the college.
Here is this week’s news of grants that may be of particular interest to women in higher education.
Karen Longman and Laurie Schreiner, two professors in the department of doctoral higher education at Azusa Pacific University in Azusa, California, have been named editors of Christian Higher Education: An International Journal of Research, Theory, and Practice. The peer-reviewed journal, published by the Taylor and Francis Group, includes original research, meta-analyses, essays, and book reviews. There are five issues published each year.
Dr. Longman is a graduate of Albion College in Michigan. She holds a master’s degree from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. She earned a second master’s degree and an educational doctorate at the University of Michigan.
Professor Schreiner chairs the doctoral program in higher education at Azusa Pacific. Also, she is a senior fellow at the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities.
Mary Anne Garnett, chair of the department of international and second languages studies at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, has been elected president of Women in French (WIF). The organization is allied with the Modern Language Association and serves to promote scholarship among women authors who write in French. The organization publishes the peer-reviewed journal, 
Young-Kee Kim was appointed the Louis Brock Professor in Physics at the University of Chicago. Professor Kim joined the faculty at the university in 2003 and since 2006 has served as deputy director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.
Beverly Kracher was named to the Robert B. Daugherty Endowed Chair in Business Ethics and Society at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. She also serves as the executive director and president of the Greater Omaha Alliance for Business Ethics.
Shadi Bartsch-Zimmer was named the Helen A. Regenstein Distinguished Service Professor in Classics at the University of Chicago. She is the author of 
The University of Louisiana at Lafayette has announced the appointment of two women to high administrative posts on an interim basis.
Patricia Cottonham is serving as interim vice president for student affairs. She has been interim dean of students since 2008. Cottonham holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
Lynne Barrett, a professor in the English department at Florida International University in Miami, has been selected to receive the Gold Award in the general fiction category of the Florida Book Awards. The awards are sponsored by the State of Florida’s Division of Cultural Affairs.
Elizabeth D. Leonard, the John J. and Cornelia V. Gibson Professor of History at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, will share the 2012 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize with William C. Harris of North Carolina State University. Both scholars are being honored for their books about Abraham Lincoln.
The $50,000 prize, which will be split by the two authors, is awarded by Gettysburg College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
Patricia G. Greene, who holds the Paul T. Babson Chair in Entrepreneurial Studies at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, received the John E. Hughes Award for Entrepreneurial Advocacy from the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship.
Alice Y. Ting, the Ellen Swallow Richards Associate Professor of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been selected to receive the Vilcek Foundation Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science. Professor Ting, who has been on the faculty at MIT since 2002, will receive a $25,000 award.
Maureen Johnson, an assistant professor of health sciences in the College of Nursing, Health, and Human Services at Indiana State University, will receive the 2012 AAHE/HEDIR Technology Award from the American Association for Health Education. She will receive the award at the association’s annual convention in Boston in March.
Karen DeJarnette was named director of the Talent and Education Development Center at University College of Syracuse University in New York. The center develops educational programs that support businesses’ workforce needs and career development opportunities for residents of central New York State.
Valerie S. Fields was named interim vice president for student affairs at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg. Since 2006 she has been assistant vice president for student affairs and an associate professor of education.
Marijane Axtell Paulsen was named chief academic officer of Jones International University, an online educational institution headquartered in Centennial, Colorado. She has served as president of Colorado Technical University and as president of Pikes Peak Community College in Colorado Springs.
Karen P. Pierce was named associate director of the Center for Writers at North Dakota State University. Since 2010 she has been serving as a graduate writing coordinator at NDSU. Previously, she taught at West Point.
Janet Ellzey, vice provost for international programs and professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Texas, was assigned the further role of overseeing the universities gender equity programs.
Brenda C. Spencer was appointed director of retention in the Office of Academic Affairs at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee. She previously was involved in the university’s planning for a new dental school.
Lakisha Sanders is the new director of financial aid at Fort Valley State University in Georgia. She was the associate director of financial aid and a business analyst at Clark Atlanta University.
Tarin Schmidt-Dalton was named assistant dean for clinical sciences at the Carillon School of Medicine at Virginia Tech. Dr. Schmidt-Dalton is an assistant professor of family medicine at the university.
Michelle Garfield Cook was named associate provost for institutional diversity at the University of Georgia. Since May 2011 she has been serving in the post on an interim basis. Previously, she was associate dean of the university’s College of Arts and Sciences.
Caryn Schultz Korman was appointed vice president for outreach at the University of Minnesota Alumni Association. She has been serving as the associate vice president of outreach and engagement at the University of Illinois Alumni Association.
Bryn Mawr College has been a leader among high-ranking liberal arts colleges in enrolling students from low-income families. As part of the college’s effort to increase diversity, in 2000 Bryn Mawr partnered with the Posse Foundation. The foundation identifies nontraditional students with exceptional academic and leadership potential, regardless of race or socioeconomic status, and groups them into small support groups. Partner colleges agree to admit the posses as a group. Many of these students are minorities and many come from low-income families.
Now Bryn Mawr will sponsor a second posse of students. And this new group will be made up exclusively of women who plan on pursuing careers in STEM fields. The women will come from public schools in Boston. The traditional posse of students to come to Bryn Mawr will now be made up of students from the Houston public schools. The change will take effect for students entering Bryn Mawr in the fall of 2013.
The appeal of the nation’s top-ranked women’s colleges remains high. Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, and Bryn Mawr all report that they received a record number of applications this year.
Sweet Briar College is using social media as a marketing tool and it appears to be meeting with success. Last fall, the women’s college in Virginia launched what it called “Project Rosebud.” The goal of the project was to increase the number of inquiries from prospective students from 80 per month to 200 per month.
Rita Dove, the Commonwealth Professor of Poetry at the University of Virginia, was awarded “for her contributions as an American poet and author. Ms. Dove creates works that are equal parts beauty, lyricism, critique, and politics. Ms. Dove has worked to create popular interest in the literary arts, serving as the United States’ youngest Poet Laureate and advocating on behalf of the diversity and vitality of American poetry and literature.”
Penne Ainsworth is associate dean and the Susie McMurry Excellence in Teaching Professor at the College of Business of the University of Wyoming. She has been on the faculty there since 1997. Previously, she taught accounting at Kansas State University.
Mable Parker McLean, who in 1974 became the first woman president of Barber-Scotia College in Concord, North Carolina, died late last month as a result of heart failure. She was 89 years old.
Diana L. Lipscomb is the Robert Weintraub Chair and professor of biological sciences at George Washington University in the nation’s capital. She is the former interim dean of the university’s Columbia College of Arts and Sciences.
Molly Easo Smith served for two years as president of Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York. This academic year she has been on sabbatical.
Irene Durrett McKinney, professor emerita at West Virginia Wesleyan College and poet laureate of the state of West Virginia, died last week at her family farm and birthplace in Belington, West Virginia, after an eight-year battle with cancer. She was 72 years old.
The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics has announced that 28 individuals have been selected as 2012 AIAA Fellows. These scholars will be honored for “notable and valuable contributions to the arts, sciences, or technology of aeronautics and astronautics.” The fellows will be inducted at the AIAA Aerospace Spotlight Awards Gala on May 9 at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington.