Marie A. Barber was named executive director of Extended Education and Outreach at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. She has been on campus for 20 years, most recently as director of instructional design and development for the university’s distance education programs.
Barber is a graduate of Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. She holds a master’s degree in ancient history from the University of Nebraska.
Wanda Hankins Dean was appointed assistant vice president for enrollment and degree management at Virginia Tech. She has been serving as university registrar and chief transfer officer at Virginia Tech.
Dean holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Virginia Tech.
Elizabeth Keefer was named general counsel and secretary of the corporation at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Her appointment is effective October 1. She has been serving as a senior vice president at TMG Strategies in Arlington, Virginia. Prior to that she was the general counsel at Columbia University.
Keefer is a graduate of Barnard College. She earned her law degree with honors from George Washington University.
Aileen Y. Huang-Saad, assistant director for academic programs and a faculty member in the department of biomedical engineering at the University of Michigan, was named co-director of the university’s new master’s degree program in entrepreneurship.
Dr. Huang-Saad is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. She holds a master’s degree from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University.
Melissa Esbenshade was named vice president of marketing for the Carrington Colleges Group, a division of DeVry Inc. She was vice president of marketing for the Universal Technical Institute. Previously, she was a marketing executive for General Electric.
A graduate of the University of Richmond, Esbenshade earned an MBA at Arizona State University.
Kathleen Spehar was named director of The O’Shaughnessy, a performing arts center on the campus of St. Catherine’s University in St. Paul, Minnesota. Since 2007 she has been serving as managing director of the St. Paul’s History Theater. She has taught at the University of Minnesota and Florida State University.
Spehar is a graduate of Western Michigan University and holds a master’s degree from the University of Minnesota.
Michelle M. Moody-Adams, dean of Columbia College at Columbia University in New York City, announced that she will step down at the end of the academic year. She is the first woman and the first African American to serve as dean of Columbia College.
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complaints on gender equality issues and that they should have been consulted in order to get an accurate assessment of the climate in the department for women. But the group Feminist Philosophers was highly supportive of the new guide and the effort to point out that women have had, and continue to have, problems gaining faculty and leadership positions in the discipline.
Through her Sunshine Lady Foundation, Doris Buffet, the sister of business tycoon Warren Buffet, distributes $10,000 Learn by Giving grants to colleges and universities. College students enrolled in philanthropy-related courses decide what local charity or charities are most deserving of the grant money. They can give the entire $10,000 to one organization or can make as many as 20 smaller grants.
The Jackson Institute for Global Affairs at Yale University has announced a new class of senior fellows for the 2011-12 academic year. Fellows are leading practitioners in various fields of international affairs that will spend a semester or an entire academic year at Yale teaching courses and mentoring students. Among this year’s class of fellows are three women.
Michele Malvesti served for five years on the staff of the National Security Council. She has also served in the Defense Intelligence Agency. She holds a Ph.D. from Tufts University.
Ana Palacio is the former minister for foreign affairs in Spain. She was the first woman to serve in this post. Palacio has also served in the Spanish Parliament and the European Parliament. She has also been senior vice president and general counsel of the World Bank.
Sheryl WuDunn, is freelance journalist who previously worked for the New York Times. She is the first Asian-American reporter to win a Pulitzer Prize. She is the author of the best-selling book 
Harvard University recently named 10 scholars as 2011 Walter Channing Cabot Fellows. The Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences honored the 10 faculty members for distinguished scholarship.
Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa, has announced several appointments and promotions for women on its faculty.
Liz Throop was named visiting professor of anthropology and interim dean of the Harold Walter Siebens School of Business. She was dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences at Saint Mary’s University in Winoma, Minnesota.
Beverly Ahern is a new assistant professor of exercise science. She has been a coach and physical education instructor in several Iowa school districts.
Karin Strohmyer was hired as an assistant professor of education/special education. She was an administrator in the Fountain Fort Carson school district in Colorado.
In addition to the new hires, Mary Gill, professor of communication, has been named interim vice president for student services and interim dean of students.
Dr. Gill holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of South Dakota. She earned a Ph.D. at the University of Nebraska.
The American College Testing Program recently released the results for 2011 high school graduating seniors who took the ACT college entrance examination. The ACT test is graded on a scale of 1 to 36. The average score for women who took the test was 21.0. For men, the average score was 21.2. The average scores and the small gender gap in test scores have remained relatively constant over the past decade with only minor fluctuations.
In a recent 
The research is being led by Nita J. Maihle, a professor of obstetrics/gynecology and a professor of pathology. She received her Ph.D. in biomedical sciences from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and completed postdoctoral training at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and the National Cancer Institute. She was a faculty member at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, for 15 years before joining the faculty at Yale in 2003.
Usha Rajagopalan is the first Hindu chaplain at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. She will provide guidance to the university’s Hindu Students Association and represent the group on the Duke University Faith Council and in the university’s Religious Life program.
A five-year grant from the Korea Foundation has enabled Dartmouth College to establish a new faculty position in Korean studies. Soyoung Suh will fill new position as an assistant professor of Asian and Middle Eastern studies. She has been serving as a research fellow at the University of Westminster in London. She previously taught at Harvard University, Pitzer College, and the University of California at Los Angeles.
Dianne M. Pinderhughes, a professor of Africana studies and a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame, was named co-chair of the advisory committee of the Civic Engagement and Governance Institute at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington. The new institute will focus on promoting broader citizen engagement and political participation. Sharing director duties of the advisory committee will be Kurt L. Schmoke, the former mayor of Baltimore who is currently dean of the Howard University School of Law.
Hannah Brenner, a lecturer in law, is a graduate of the University of Iowa and the University of Iowa College of Law. Gender equality in the legal profession is a major issue for Brenner. She states that “much work remains to open positions of leadership and power in the legal profession to women.”
Priya Narasimhan was named c0-director of the Intel Science and Research Center for Embedded Computing at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. The center will be funded with a five-year, $15 million grant from Intel. The research will focus on technology innovations for the home, the car, and the retail environment. Mei Chen, senior research scientist at Intel, will be the co-principal investigator on the project.
Gisele Bennett is a professor and director of the Electro-Optical Systems Laboratory at the Georgia Tech Research Institute. Her research focuses on the study of optical coherence imaging systems. A graduate of the University of Central Florida, she holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Georgia Tech.
Suzanne Eskin is principal research scientist in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and the Emory University School of Medicine. Her research is concentrated on vascular biology. Dr. Eskin holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Rice University and a Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Texas.
Sylvia Spears is the new director of the educational doctorate program at New England College in Henniker, New Hampshire. She was acting dean of the college at Dartmouth. In her new role, Dr. Spears will also serve as an associate professor and assistant vice president for academic initiatives. The new doctoral program is enrolling 24 students this fall who can concentrate in either higher education leadership or K-12 education leadership.
Three women fundraisers at the University of Arkansas have been promoted to senior directors of development and external relations. Kellie Knight will lead the fundraising efforts at the university’s College of Engineering. At the Sam M. Walton College of Business, Katy Nelson will be the senior development officer. Dina Wood will be in charge of fundraising at the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences.
Susan Fritz was named associate vice president for academic affairs at the University of Nebraska. Since 2005, she has served as associate vice chancellor of the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the university.
Ann Marie Whyte was appointed interim associate dean for administration and human resources at the University of Central Florida’s College of Business. She has been on the university’s faculty since 1998.
Carmen Sidbury is the new associate provost for research and resources at Spelman College in Atlanta. She was associate dean of undergraduate studies at the college. For the past two years Dr. Sidbury has been serving as director of the Graduate Research Fellowship Program at the National Science Foundation.
Irma Van Scoy was appointed executive director of USC Connect, a new initiative at the University of South Carolina that will help students select relevant activities and to use those activities to enhance their educational experience. Van Scoy is the former associate dean for academic and student affairs at the university’s College of Education.
Paula Brewer Byron was named director of communications at the Carilion School of Medicine and Research at Virginia Tech. She was the editor of Harvard Medicine magazine at Harvard Medical School.
Wanda Lester was promoted to associate vice chancellor for academic affairs at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro. She was serving in the position on an interim basis. Previously, she was associate dean of the School of Business and Economics at the university.
Elvina Pearce, taught piano and was the director of the Division of Preparatory and Community Music at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. She also taught for 14 years at Northwestern University. Pearce recently received the 2011 Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy.
Catherine MacDonald, who teaching creative writing at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, received the 2011 Miller Williams Arkansas Poetry Prize from the University of Arkansas Press. MacDonald was honored for her first collection of poetry entitled Rousing the Machinery. The collection will be published next spring.
Danielle L. McGuire, an assistant professor of history at Wayne State University in Detroit and a distinguished lecturer for the Organization of American Historians, will receive the 2011 Lillian Smith Book Award next month at the Decatur Book Festival in Georgia. The award is sponsored by the Southern Regional Council, the University of Georgia Libraries, and the Georgia Center for the Book. Professor McGuire is being honored for her book, 
Carolyn Mosley, dean of the College of Health Sciences at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith, will receive the 2011 National TRIO Achiever Award, from the Council for Opportunity in Education at the group’s annual conference in Washington, D.C., on September 27.
Ingrid Daubechies, the James B. Duke Professor of Mathematics at Duke University, will receive the 2011 Jack S. Kilby Signal Processing Medal from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Professor Daubechies was honored for her “pioneering contributions to the theory and application of wavelet transforms.”
Brenda Y. Cartwright, associate professor of kinesiology and rehabilitation in the College of Education at the University of Hawaii, received the Virgie Winston-Smith Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Association of Multicultural Rehabilitation Concerns.
“Many organizations now want to change, want to close gender gaps, partly because it is the right thing to do, but also because it increasingly is the smart thing to do.”
Dorothy Cowser Yancy was named interim president of Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. Irma McClaurin, the former president, resigned last week and published reports suggested that she was forced out by the university’s board of trustees. Yancy has agreed to serve as interim president for up to two years while the university finds a permanent successor for Dr. McClaurin.
Haverford College in Pennsylvania has announced the Joanne V. Creighton will serve as interim president of the highly rated liberal arts college until a permanent president can be found.
The National Bureau of Statistics in China announced that in 2009 women made up nearly half of all undergraduates students at Chinese universities. In 1978 women were only 24.2 percent of all undergraduate students.
Surina Dixon, the former head women’s basketball coach at Texas Southern University in Houston, was awarded $730,000 by a jury in a federal lawsuit she filed in April 2010. Dixon was hired in March 2008 and fired three months later. She now is a teacher at a high school in Memphis, Tennessee.
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The Ministry of Human Resources in India reports that women now make up 38.6 percent of the total enrollments in Indian higher education. This is up from 34 percent in the 2001-02 academic year.
The University of California at Santa Barbara has appointed Laura Romo the new director of the Chicano Studies Institute. Dr. Romo is an associate professor of education at the university. The Institute, formed in 1969, facilitates interdisciplinary research on the Chicano/Latino experience in California and the United States.
Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, has appointed two women to named professorships.
Lynn Cooley is the C.N.H. Long Professor of Genetics. Her research is focused on oogenesis, the process of egg development. She is a graduate of Connecticut College and earned a Ph.D. at the University of Texas. She conducted postdoctoral research at the Carnegie Institute for Science.
Rajita Sinha, director of the Yale Interdisciplinary Stress Center, was named the Foundations’ Fund Professor of Psychiatry at Yale. Her research concerns the relationship between stress and addiction.