Dr. Valdiviezo was a professor of education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. A scholar of educational ethnography, she served as chair of the department of teacher education and curriculum studies and as director of the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies.
Professor Al-Bilal was the first Black woman to earn the rank of full professor in the department of theater at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she was also affiliated with the Honors Program and the W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies.
Here is this week’s roundup of Black Americans who have been appointed to new administrative positions at colleges and universities throughout the United States. If you have news for our appointments section, please email the information to contact@jbhe.com.
Paola Arlotta of Harvard University, Jayati Ghosh of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Miriam Merad of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai are among the 46 scholars who have been named 2025 Fellows of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in Rome.
The appointments are Tamara Josserand at North Carolina A&T State University, Willa Smith at Stony Brook University, Anette Saxe at the University of Nevada-Reno, Linda Chavers at Holyoke Community College, Beth Dowling at Dartmouth College, Kristine Brown at Bucknell University, Janet Hadar at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and Paula Murphy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
The appointments are Yiyun Li at Princeton University, Verity Harte of Yale University, Pavithra Prabhakar at the University of New Mexico, Sarah Bilston at Trinity College in Connecticut, Linda Tropp at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Christina Ramos at Washington University in St. Louis, and Terry Kind at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
Dr. Nagurney, a longtime professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, was recently honored by INFORMS, an international organization for operations research and analytics professionals. She was recognized for her pioneering career in supply chain and transportation networks, her leadership in advancing other women in her field, and her commitmefornt to applying her research for societal benefit.
“It has been an immense privilege to serve as Westminster University’s nineteenth president,” said Dr. Dobkin. “Working together with faculty, students, staff, alumni, and our generous community has been the honor of a lifetime.
Overall, women political commentators speak less and are interrupted more on male-dominated discussion panels, particularly male-dominated debate programs. However, in polite conversations, women speak just as often as men, but are still interrupted more often, even when they represent the majority of panel speakers.
Kalenda Eaton is president of the Western Literature Association, Evelyn Fields is chair of the South Carolina Education Deans' Alliance, and Alexandra Meliou is vice chair of the Special Interest Group on Management of Data for the Association for Computing Machinery.
The academic women taking on new roles are Beatriz Lorenzo, Elizabeth Wyles, Megan Case, Lacie Peterson, Stephanie Payne, Sarah Stoneback, Lisa McNair, Cynthia Sides, Amy Landis, Andrea Page-McCaw, Jess Hartshorn, and Lesley Reid.
The professors are Kelsey Slater at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lauren Andrews at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Alicia Spence at Texas A&M University, Janelle Adams at Kansas, TaKeia Anthony at Hampton University in Virginia, Jennifer Jackson at the California Institute of Technology, and Hee Ra Yoo at the University of Cincinnati.
