Since 2006 the Bergeron Scholars program at Georgia State University has provided financial aid and mentoring opportunities for five women each year pursuing careers in STEM fields. In addition to scholarships, the women are paired with executive-level mentors in their chosen fields.
Now the Bergeron Scholars program has been extended to the University of California at Berkeley. Five women at Berkeley each year will receive scholarships and be paired with mentors. The women will also have access to internship opportunities, academic assistance, and career development tools.
The program is funded by a $1.5 million grant from Sandra and Douglass Bergeron. Douglass Bergeron is CEO of VeriFone Systems. Sandra Bergeron is chair of TraceSecurity and a venture partner with Trident Capital.
The University of Cincinnati is requiring all faculty and staff to complete an online training program on harassment. Students are also being asked to participate in the training program. There are four tracks for different campus constituencies: faculty, staff, students, and supervisors.
Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, received a five-year, $600,000 grant from the National Science Foundation that will be used to advance the careers of women faculty in sciences disciplines. The project is directed by Joanne Smieja, the first woman tenured chemistry professor at Gonzaga.
The College of Nursing at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis has identified three candidates as finalists for the position as dean. The candidates will all visit campus in the coming weeks before a choice is made. The three candidates are:
Sister Mary Hiltride Koba, the third president of Felician College in Lodi, New Jersey, died earlier this month at the Felician Sisters Immaculate Conception Convent. She was 95 years old.
Francine C. McNairy, president of Millersville University in Pennsylvania, has announced that she will retire a year from now on January 30, 2013. In an email to the campus community, President McNairy wrote, “This has not been an easy decision, but it is the right decision. The time is now right for new leadership.”
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has selected Andrea Ghez to receive the 2012 Crafoord Prize in Astronomy. Dr. Ghez is a professor of astronomy at the University of California at Los Angeles. She is being honored by the academy for “observations of stars orbiting the galactic center, indicating the presence of a supermassive black hole.”
Cheryl B. Schrader has been selected as the next chancellor of the Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla. The appointment is effective on April 2. Dr. Schrader is currently the associate vice president for strategic research initiatives at Boise State University in Idaho.
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.
The North Dakota Board of Higher Education has named six semifinalists for chancellor of the University of North Dakota system. None of the six semifinalists are women. There were 21 applicants for the job. Two were women.
Shannon Beets was promoted to executive vice president and provost at Sierra Nevada College in Incline Village, Nevada. She was vice president for institutional effectiveness. Since 2006 Beets has served in many administrative roles at the college including registrar, associate provost for graduate programs, and dean of enrollment services.
Emily Williams Knight was named president of Kendall College in Chicago. She was vice president for Laureate Education Inc., the company that operates Kendall College. She is the former vice president of marketing and sales for Pearson Education. Earlier in her career she was on the faculty of Montgomery County Community College in Pennsylvania.
The University of Utah has named Sylvia Torti as dean of its Honors College. She joined the university’s faculty in 2003 as a research assistant professor of biology and has been serving as associate director of the university’s Rio Mesa Center near Moab, Utah. The research center provides students a venue for interdisciplinary studies of the environment and ecology.
The University of Missouri School of Law has announced five finalists for dean of the law school. Of the five finalists, three are men and two are women. Each of the five finalists will visit the Columbia, Missouri, campus between now and the end of February.
Marcella David is a professor and associate dean for international and comparative law at the University of Iowa. She returned to the law school faculty in 2010 after serving for five years as special assistant to the president of the University of Iowa for equal opportunity and diversity and associate provost for diversity. She had initially joined the law school faculty at the University of Iowa in 1995.
Beverly I. Moran is a professor of law at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. She joined the Vanderbilt faculty in 2001 after teaching at the University of Cincinnati College of Law. She is an expert on tax law and has written extensively on how the nation’s tax laws work against African Americans.
This past weekend six simultaneous sessions of the Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics were held across the United States. The conferences were held on the campuses of Stanford University, Case Western Reserve University, Yale University, the University of Tennessee, Texas A&M University, and the University of Washington. The Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics was first held in 2006 at the University of Southern California. That year, 29 undergraduate women attended. This year there were 800 women in attendance at the six sessions.
Meg Urry, the Israel Munson Professor of Physics and Astronomy, chair of the physics department at Yale, and the department’s first tenured woman, explained the goals of the conference: “They need encouragement and support and the opportunity to network with other women in physics. We’ve found the conference particularly useful for bringing women into physics and retaining them. At Yale, the percentage of physics majors who are women is roughly double the national average. In my view the conference is a big reason why.”
Jo Rae Wright, a professor of cell biology, medicine, and pediatrics at Duke University, died earlier this month after a long battle with breast cancer. Professor Wright had stepped down as dean of the university’s graduate school in October because of her health. She had been dean since 2006.
Kathleen Sluka, professor in the graduate program of physical therapy and rehabilitation science at the University of Iowa, has been chosen to receive the 2012 Frederick W.L. Kerr Basic Science Research Award from the American Pain Society. She will receive the award this May at the American Pain Society’s annual meeting.
Nancy Condee, professor of Slavic languages and literatures and director of the Global Studies Center at the University of Pittsburgh, received the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize from the Modern Language Association. Professor Condee was honored for her book, 
Twila L. Perry, professor and the Alexander T. Waugh Scholar at the Rutgers University School of Law in Newark, New Jersey, received the 2012 Clyde Ferguson Award, one of the highest honors bestowed by the Association of American Law Schools. The award honors the late C. Clyde Ferguson who taught at Harvard Law School and was the first tenured African American professor at Rutgers Law. Professor Perry is the first African American woman to gain tenure at the Rutgers law school.
Cynthia J. Wyels, professor and director of the graduate mathematics program at California State University Channel Islands in Camarillo, received the Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Award for Distinguished College or University of Teaching Mathematics from the Mathematical Association of America. Professor Wyels has been at CalState since 2005. She previously taught at the United States Military Academy, Weber State University, and California Lutheran University.
The University of Texas at Austin has announced that on January 31 Victoria Rodriguez is stepping down as vice provost and dean of graduate studies. She will return to her full-time teaching position as the Ashbel Smith Professor at the university’s Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs.
Stepping into the leadership role as interim dean will be Judith Langlois. She has served as a vice provost at the university since 2007. A search for a permanent new dean will begin in the fall. Stephen W. Leslie, provost at the University of Texas, said, “The school is in good hands with vice provost Langlois. Judy has strong leadership skills and deep experience.”
Williams College, the highly rated liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts, has announced the granting of tenure to eight faculty members. Four of the new tenured faculty members are women.
Sonia A. Hirt is the inaugural senior fellow at the Institute for Society, Culture, and Environment at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. She is an associate professor of urban affairs and planning at Virginia Tech.
Wynetta Y. Lee was named dean of the H.M. Michaux Jr. School of Education at North Carolina Central University in Durham. She was the dean of the College of Education at Grambling State University in Louisiana. Previously, she was associate vice president for academic planning, research, and graduate studies at California State University-Monterey Bay, and assistant provost for curriculum and director of undergraduate research at Dillard University in New Orleans. Dr. Lee served on the faculty at North Carolina State University from 1992-2002.
Suzanne Mettler, the Clinton Rossiter Professor of American Institutions at Cornell University, has been named a fellow of the Century Foundation. The foundation, originally known as the Twentieth Century Fund, was founded in 1919 by Edward Filene, a businessman who was a champion of fair employment practices. Today, the nonpartisan public policy think tank focuses on issues of equal opportunity and the diffusion of global power.
Susan T. Mayne was appointed the Winslow Professor of Epidemiology at the Yale University School of Public Health. She is the director of the Division of Chronic Disease Epidemiology and associate director of the Yale Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Nan Laird was named the Harvey V. Fineberg Professor of Public Health at the Harvard School of Public Health. Since 1986, Dr. Laird has been on the faculty at the HSPH since 1975 and has been a full professor of biostatistics since 1986.
The University of Southern California announced that Midori, who holds the Jascha Heifetz Distinguished Chair in Violin, was named a Distinguished Professor at the university. Midori made her orchestral debut with the New York Philharmonic at age 11.
Linda Schadler was appointed the Russell Sage Professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. She is a professor of materials science and engineering and associate dean for academic affairs at the university. She joined the faculty at RPI in 1996 and was promoted to full professor in 2003.
Margaret C. Wilmoth is the inaugural dean of the Byrdine F. Lewis School of Nursing and Health Professions at Georgia State University. She recently completed a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellowship in Washington. She is a former professor of nursing at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Julie Friend was named associate director for international safety and security in the Study Abroad Office of Northwestern University. She held a similar position at Michigan State University.
Rhonda Harris is the new chief of police at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. Since 2006 she has been the chief of university police at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
Maria Baxter-Nuamah was appointed director of advancement relations at Minnesota State University in Mankato. She has been serving as director of African American affairs in the office of institutional diversity at the university. In her new position, Baxter-Nuamah will direct outreach efforts to alumni who have not participated in recent development efforts and she will develop strategies for working with alumni of color and international alumni.
Michelle Rodgers was named associate dean for extension and outreach in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources and director of Cooperative Extension at the University of Delaware. The appointment is effective April 2. Dr. Rodgers is currently the director of Michigan State University Extension. Before going to Michigan State in 2007, she was on the extension staff at Pennsylvania State University for 27 years.
Donna S. Martsoff is the new associate dean of research and translation at the University of Cincinnati College of Nursing. From 1993 to 2011, she served on the nursing faculty at Kent State University.
Mitra Dutta was named interim vice chancellor for research at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is a distinguished professor and chair of the department of electrical and computer engineering at the university. She has been on the UIC faculty since 2001 and previously was a senior executive at the U.S. Army Research Office.
Mary Ann Mavrinac was appointed vice provost and the Andrew H. and Janet Dayton Neilly Dean of River Campus Libraries at the University of Rochester. She was chief librarian at the Mississauga campus of the University of Toronto.
Laura Bassi was an 18th century Italian scientist. She was the second woman in Europe to earn a university degree and the first woman to be offered a teaching post at a European University.
Paula Findlen, the Ubaldo Pierotti Professor of Italian History at Stanford, states, “Bassi was widely admired as an excellent experimenter and one of the best teachers of Newtonian physics of her generation. She inspired some of the most important male scientists of the next generation while also serving as a public example of a woman shaping the nature of knowledge in an era in which few women could imagine playing such a role.”
The Campus Accountability Project is urging students to search out their college and university policies on sexual harassment and upload them to its online database. The database now includes policies from over 230 colleges and universities that can be searched and analyzed online. By examining the policies, student activists can see how the policies at their college or university stack up against those at other schools. By comparing policies from campus to campus, students can then take action to improve the policies on their campus.
Trivia: Voices of Feminism, a journal that was established in 1982 in western Massachusetts, has found a new home at Arizona State University. The journal was founded as a print publication but transitioned to an online journal.
Recently Lego toys introduced a new line of characters targeting girls. The new Lego Friends series has girl characters that are taller, thinner, and bustier. The marketing campaign says that the girls like to ride in “cool convertibles” and “work on their tans” in the pool. The characters come with sets that feature a cafe and a beauty shop.
SPARK (Sexualization Protest, Action, Resistance, Knowledge), a national group that works to inform the public about the sexual depiction of women in the media, and Hardy Girls Healthy Women, an empowerment group based in Waterville, Maine, quickly mounted a protest against the new Lego line. Both groups were founded by Lyn Mikel Brown, a professor of education at Colby College. Professor Brown stated, “We want to see girls doing more than clubbing and partying and being concerned about their weight and appearance.”
Professor Brown is a graduate of Ottawa University in Kansas. She holds a master’s degree in human development and psychology and an educational doctorate from Harvard University.
Since it was established in 2009 the membership of the Women in Need Foundation (WIN) at the University of South Florida has grown from 20 to 200. Members of the foundation assist a local domestic violence shelter with fundraising and other activities. In addition, the group raises domestic violence awareness on campus and instructs members in the martial arts so they can defend themselves against assault.
A woman has filed a lawsuit against the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut. The woman, who is an African American Muslim, claims that she was sexually harassed by a male student. When she reported the harassment to the university, the suit says the university responded with “deliberate indifference.” The suit says that when the woman met with the dean, she was told, “My hands are tied. What do you suggest I do.”