Nine Women Faculty Members Take on New Roles

Ishita Mukerji was appointed to the Fisk Professorship of Natural Sciences at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. She has been on the university’s faculty since 1994 and recently completed her tenure as dean of natural sciences and mathematics. Dr. Mukerji is a professor of molecular biology and biochemistry.

Professor Mukerji is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Lida E. Maxwell was promoted to associate professor of political science at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. She also was awarded tenure. Dr. Maxwell joined the faculty at Trinity College in 2009.

Dr. Maxwell is a graduate of Wellesley College in Massachusetts, where she majored in religion. She earned a Ph.D. in political science at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

Elizabeth Castelli, the Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Religion at Barnard College in New York City, was named editorial director of the Marginalia Review of Books. The new review, focusing on the academic study of religion, is an offshoot of the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Professor Castelli has been on the faculty at Barnard College since 1995. She is a graduate of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in religion from Claremont Graduate University in California.

Margaret S. Clark was named the John M. Musser Professor of Psychology at Yale University. She also serves as the director of the Clark Relationship Science Laboratory at Yale. Professor Clark joined the faculty at Yale in 2005 after teaching for 28 years at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

Professor Clark holds a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Maryland at College Park.

Caroline Elkins was named the inaugural Oppenheimer Faculty Director of the Center for African Studies at Harvard University. Since 2009, Dr. Elkins has been the faculty chair of the Committee on African Studies at the university and became the founding chair of the Center for African Studies in 2014. Professor Elkins is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya (Henry Holt & Co., 2005).

Dr. Elkins is a summa cum laude graduate of Princeton University. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in history from Harvard University.

Deborah Vischak is a new assistant professor of art and archaeology at Princeton University. Since 2013, she has been an adjunct assistant professor at the City University of New York.

Dr. Vischak is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University.

Constance W. Ziemian was appointed Presidential Professor at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. She is a professor of mechanical engineering at Bucknell.

Dr. Ziemian holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering and an MBA from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. She earned a Ph.D. in industrial and manufacturing engineering from Pennsylvania State University.

Jane Parish, an extension and research professor at the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Prairie Research Center of Mississippi State University, has taken on the additional responsibility of executive director of the Beef Improvement Federation. The federation was established in 1968.

Professor Parish is a graduate of Texas A&M University. She holds a master’s degree from Texas Tech University, an MBA from Mississippi State University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Georgia.

Christina Kan is a new assistant professor of marketing at the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University. She recently completed her Ph.D. in marketing from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Dr. Kan earned a bachelor’s degree in commerce, marketing, and international business from the Saunder School of Business at the Univerity of British Columbia.