The board of regents of Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau announced the results of a periodic review of the status of six university deans and three associate deans. All three associate deans and five of the six deans were reappointed to five-year terms. The sixth dean, Margaret Noe, dean of the School of Education, was not reappointed but will continue on at the university as a tenured professor. Tamela Randolph was named interim dean of the School of Education, effective immediately.
Professor Noe has served as dean of the School of Education for the past three years. She is a graduate of Eureka College in Eureka, Illinois. Dr. Noe holds master’s and doctoral degrees in education from Illinois State University and a law degree from Southern Illinois University
Ann M. Svennungsen, former president of Texas Lutheran University and resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota, is leading a new effort called the President’s Pledge. The goal of the initiative is to have at least 100 college and university presidents pledge 5 percent of their earnings to combat global poverty.
Rev. Svennungsen promised a complete list of participants at a later date. But we do know that Lynn Pasquerella, president of Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, has signed the pledge. President Pasquerella will earmark much of her donations to support the work she does in Africa to provide clean water, sustainable agriculture, and entrepreneurship opportunities.
Converse College, an educational institution for women in Spartanburg, South Carolina, has entered into a partnership program with the Vanderbilt University School of Nursing in Nashville. Under the new arrangement, Converse College students will study for three years on the Spartanburg campus. If they are in good standing academically, they will then spend the next two years at Vanderbilt. Students who complete the program will obtain a bachelor’s degree in biology from Converse College and a master’s degree in nursing from Vanderbilt.
The board of trustees of Pine Manor College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, has approved a new scholarship program to help low-income women obtain higher education. The Woman of Promise Scholarships will be offered in the coming academic year to 10 first-year students. Students applying for the $20,000 awards must have maintained a 3.0 grade point average in high school. The scholarships can be continued if the student maintains a 2.5 GPA while enrolled at Pine Manor College.
Wesleyan University, the highly regarded liberal arts institution in Middletown, Connecticut, has promoted three women to full professor. Another woman was granted tenure and promoted to associate professor.
Lori Gruen, who has taught at Wesleyan since 2000, was promoted to full professor of philosophy. Her research focuses on the ethical treatment of animals. Professor Gruen holds a bachelor’s degree and a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado.
Magda Teter was promoted to full professor of history and named the Jeremy Zwelling Professor of Jewish Studies. She has taught at Wesleyan since 2000. She is a graduate of the University of Warsaw in Poland. Professor Teter holds two master’s degrees and a Ph.D. from Columbia University.
Elizabeth Willis was named full professor and appointed the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing. Professor Willis has been on the Wesleyan faculty since 2002. She is a poet and a scholar of poetry. Dr. Willis is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire and earned a Ph.D. at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Mary Alice Haddad, who has served on the Wesleyan faculty since 2004, was promoted to associate professor of government and granted tenure. She is the author of 
The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University has named Joanna Aizenberg and Leah Price as faculty program directors of Academic Ventures. In this position, professors Aizenberg and Price will lead new multidisciplinary collaborations and develop innovative programming across the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences that engage faculty and the public in the work of leading theorists and practitioners. The Academic Ventures program will conduct public symposia, conferences, and workshops.
Joanna Aizenberg is the Amy Smith Berylson Professor of Materials Science at the Harvard University School of Engineering and Applied Science. Dr. Aizenberg holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemistry from Moscow State University. She earned a Ph.D. in structural biology at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.
Leah Price is a professor of English at Harvard University. She is the author of 
, the American Chemical Society was founded by 35 chemists at the College of Pharmacy of the City of New York. Today the society has more than 163,000 members.
Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, has announced that three women have been promoted to the rank of full professor. Four other women were granted tenure and promoted to associate professor.
Sheila M. Fisher was promoted to full professor of English. She has been on the faculty at Trinity College since 1984 and chaired the English department from 2005 to 2008. Professor Fisher is a graduate of Smith College. She holds two master’s degrees and a Ph.D. from Yale University. Her latest book is 
Sarah A. Raskin was named a full professor of psychology and neuroscience. She has taught at Trinity since 1994. Professor Raskin is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University. She earned a Ph.D. in neuropsychology from the City University of New York.
Gail H. Woldu, who has been on the faculty at Trinity since 1987, was promoted to professor of music. She is a graduate of Goucher College in Baltimore. She holds a master’s degree and Ph.D. from Yale. Professor Woldu is the author of 
Louise Sandmeyer, executive director of the Office of Planning and Institutional Assessment at Pennsylvania State University, is retiring. After coming to Penn State in 1974, Sandmeyer chaired a study group more than 30 years ago that recommended the establishment of a women’s center on campus. She was the co-founder of a group called Campus Colleagues where women would meet with the university’s top administrators. The group evolved into what is today called the Women’s Alliance.
Rear Admiral Wendi B. Carpenter has been chosen as the next president of the State University of New York Maritime College in the Bronx. She will be the first women president of the college. Carpenter has been serving as commander of the Navy’s Warfare Development Command. In 2005, she was the first woman aviator appointed to the rank of admiral.
Mary P. Watkins, professor of nursing at Delaware State University in Dover, is retiring. She has been granted emerita status by the university’s board of trustees. Professor Watkins came to Delaware State in 1993 after teaching at Coppin State University in Baltimore.
Mary Thornberry, professor of political science at Davidson College in North Carolina, is retiring after 38 years in academia, including 31 years in the political science department at Davidson.
Helen Cafferty was named the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of German and Humanities Emerita at Bowdoin College in Maine. She was the first woman in the history of the college to rise through all levels of teaching from instructor to full professor. She came to Bowdoin in 1972.
Also retiring from teaching at Bowdoin is June A. Vail who will become Professor of Dance Emerita. Professor Vail established the dance program at Bowdoin when she arrived on campus 40 years ago. She served as chair of the department of theater and dance from 1994 to 2002.
The University of New Mexico has announced that Kathleen A. Holscher will be the inaugural holder of the Endowed Chair of Roman Catholic Studies in the religious studies program at the university. The chair is funded in part through a donation from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Santa Fe. Professor Holscher will also hold an appointment in the American studies program.
Beth L. Kaskel was named chair of the nursing division at Notre Dame College in South Euclid, Ohio. Since 2006, she has served as associate professor of nursing at the Fort Wayne campus of Indiana University-Purdue University. Previously, she taught at Ohio Northern University and James A. Rhodes State College.
Janet L. Branchaw was named interim director of the Institute for Biology Education at the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She has been serving as a faculty associate and director of undergraduate research and education at the institute.
Marie Lynn Miranda, one of the nation’s leading experts on children and environmental health, was been chosen as the new dean of the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan. Her appointment is effective at the beginning of 2012. Currently, she is a professor of environmental sciences and policy at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. She is also the director the Children’s Environmental Health Initiative at Duke.
Jennifer Webb, associate professor of interior design at the Fay Jones School of Architecture at the University of Arkansas was awarded the Joel Polsky Prize from the American Society of Interior Designers Educational Foundation. Professor Webb, and her coauthors, were honored for their book 
Joan Cronan, interim vice chancellor and director of athletics at the University of Tennessee, received the 2011 Carl Maddox Sports Management Award from the United States Sports Academy. Before recently being named interim vice chancellor and director of athletics, Cronan served as director of women’s athletics at the university since 1983. She is the former president of the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics.
Donna Ratcliffe, director of career services at Virginia Tech, received the Distinguished Service Award from the Eastern Association of Colleges and Employers. Dr. Ratcliffe has served in the office of career services for 27 years, the last eight as director.
Juliet B. Schor, professor of sociology at Boston College, received the 2011 Herman Daly Award from the U.S. Society for Ecological Economics. She was honored for her research on work, leisure, and consumption. Her latest book is 
Frances D. Fergusson, former president of Vassar College and former president of the board of overseers at Harvard University, received the Harvard Medal for outstanding service to the university.
Erica Estus, clinical assistant professor of pharmacy at the University of Rhode Island, received the Leadership in Education Award from the American Society of Consultant Pharmacists.
Carolyn Y. Woo, the Martin J. Gillen Dean of the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame, has announced that she will leave the university at the end of the year to become president and CEO of Catholic Relief Services, the international humanitarian organization.
Keri Alexander Luchowski was named executive director of the North Coast Athletic Conference. She has serving as acting executive director. The conference is made up of 10 academically respected colleges and universities. The members are: Allegheny College, Denison University, DePauw University, Hiram College, Kenyon College, Oberlin College, Ohio Wesleyan University, Wabash College, Wittenberg University, and The College of Wooster.
E. Janyce Dawkins was named interim director of the Equal Opportunity Office at the University of Georgia. She has been serving as the office’s associate director.
Mary Lee Kennedy was appointed senior associate provost for the Harvard Library. She was serving as executive director of knowledge and library services at Harvard Business School. Before joining Harvard in 2004, she was director of the Knowledge Network Group at Microsoft.
Beth Meyerowitz was named vice provost for faculty and programmatic development at the University of Southern California. She is a professor of psychology and preventive medicine at the university’s Dornsife College. Previously, she served as dean of the faculty at Dornsife and was director of the university’s clinical psychology graduate program.
Anne Bezuidenhout was appointed interim senior associate dean of liberal arts at the University of South Carolina. She is a professor and chair of the philosophy department at the university.
Salem College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, has announced that Barbara Lister-Sink will be the new artistic director at its School of Music. She previously served as artist-in-residence and acting director of the School of Music. From 1986 to 1992, she was dean of the School of Music.
The college also announced that Cristy Lynn Brown will be the new associate director of the School of Music. She was an instructor of voice at the college.
Betty Roberts, an educator, politician, and first woman on sit on the Oregon Supreme Court, has died at her home in Portland from pulmonary fibrosis. She was 88 years old.
Dartmouth College announced that the papers of Donnella Meadows will be donated to the university. Meadows, who taught at Dartmouth from 1972 until her death in 2001, was a leading environmental scientist who established the Sustainability Institute in 1996. She resigned from a full-time teaching role in 1983 to devote more time to the sustainability movement but continued to teach environmental journalism and environmental ethics as an adjunct professor.
Maria Goeppert Mayer, one of only two women to win the Nobel Prize in physics, will be honored with a stamp issued by the U.S. Postal Service.
Women in Academia Report regularly publishes a list of new books that may be of interest to our readers. Here are the latest selections. Click on any of the titles for more information or to purchase through Amazon.com.
Harvard Business School reports that the incoming class of MBA students will have the highest percentage of women in the school’s history. Women make up 39 percent of the 918 students scheduled to begin classes this fall. In 2010 and 2009, women made up 36 percent of the incoming class.
The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination has ordered the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth to pay $350,000 in damages to a woman who claimed she was denied a promotion due to her race and gender. Dr. LuLu Sun who holds master’s and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Michigan, was denied promotion to full professor on two occasions. The commission heard testimony that Professor Sun was held to a higher standard than other faculty members and that some officials didn’t even bother to read her application for promotion.
In another case the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, a principal teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School, was ordered by a jury to pay $50,000 to Lynn Hlatky who had claimed she was fired in 2005 because of her gender. When she was let go, administrators had told her that her research in radiation oncology did not fit with the goals of her department. But she produced evidence that male colleagues whose research was not in line with departmental goals were not dismissed.
After an article in the Chicago Tribune this past week revealed that Marquette University had failed to report several sexual assaults that had occurred on campus to the Milwaukee police, the university has changed its policy. The university admitted that it had neglected to report several cases of sexual assault to local law enforcement authorities over the past decade, which is an apparent violation of state law. One woman claimed that she had been raped by a student athlete in February but when she went to the campus police, no report was taken and the police were not notified.
At the University of Tennessee, 16 junior high girls recently spent a week on campus participating in the university’s Transportation Academy. The goal is to garner interest among the girls in careers in the transportation industry.
Debra S. Larson was named dean of the College of Engineering at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. Dr. Larson will assume her new duties on August 22. She will be the leader of the university’s largest college with 5,000 students and 13 degree programs.
In August Mehnaz M. Afridi will become director of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Interfaith Education Center at Manhattan College in the Bronx. The campus organization was previously known as the Holocaust Resource Center.
This year, conservatives in the Texas legislatures proposed to eliminate all funds for women’s and ethnic studies programs at state universities. The lobbying group Young Conservatives of Texas which supported the cuts, stated that “these programs and centers distract from the university’s core mission of teaching and expend valuable resources to promote an explicitly left-wing political and social agenda.”
The legislature did not totally gut funding but did make substantial cuts to women’s and ethnic studies programs. But at the University of Texas, the administration stepped in and restored funding to the Mexican-American and African-American studies programs. But there was no rescue for women’s studies. Susan S. Heinzelman, associate professor and director of The Center for Women’s & Gender Studies told The Texas Independent, “Women’s issues always seem to get preempted by someone else.”
The women’s athletics program at Stanford University won the inaugural Capital One Cup signifying the cumulative national champion across 13 different women’s sports. Stanford did not win any national championships in the sports making up the Capital One Cup standings but finished second in soccer, tennis, and rowing. Stanford finished in the top 5 nationally in six of the 13 sports and in the top 10 in nine sports.
Texas A&M University, which won national championships in track and field and basketball, finished second in the Capital One Cup standings. The University of California, the University of Florida, and the University of Notre Dame rounded out the top 5 in the standings.
David Flory, who has been on the physics department faculty at Fairleigh Dickinson University campus in Madison, New Jersey, for more than 40 years, was arrested earlier this week while patronizing a Starbucks in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Professor Flory has a vacation home in Santa Fe.