Six Women Scholars Taking on New Faculty Assignments

Anne Marie Lennon, an internationally recognized leader in precancerous pancreatic lesions and early cancer detection, will be the new chair of the University of Pittsburgh’s department of medicine and chair of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, effective March 1. She is the Moses and Helen Golden Paulson Professor of Gastroenterology and director of the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.

Dr. Lennon received her medical degree from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in 1996. In addition, Dr. Lennon obtained a Ph.D. from The National University of Ireland.

Michelle Richardson was named faculty athletics representative for Coppin State University in Baltimore. Dr. Richardson joined Coppin State University in 2018 and is an associate professor and coordinator of the sport management program in the Coppin State University College of Business. She is currently the president of the North American Society for Sociology of Sport.

Dr. Richsrdson earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Howard University in Washington, D.C. She holds a master’s degree in sport management from Florida State University and a Ph.D. in sport administration from the University of New Mexico.

Jane Freedman, professor of medicine and director of the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, has been named to serve as interim chair for the department of medicine and physician-in-chief for the Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Dr Freedman, who is the Gladys Parkinson Stahlman Professor of Cardiovascular Research and physician-in-chief for the Vanderbilt Heart and Vascular Institute, joined the faculty in 2021. She is the first woman to lead the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine.

Dr. Freedman is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Medical School.

Jallicia A. Jolly is a new assistant professor of American studies and Black studies at Amherst College in Massachusetts. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University. Dr. Jolly’s first book, Ill Erotics: Black Caribbean Women and Self-Making in the Time of HIV/AIDS, is forthcoming from the University of California Press.

Dr. Jolly is a graduate of Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. She earned a Ph.D. at the University of Michigan.

Kristala L. J. Prather, the Arthur Dehon Little Professor, has been named the new head of the department of chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Prather joined MIT’s faculty in 2004. She studies the design of recombinant microorganisms for the production of small molecules.

Dr. Prather received a bachelor’s degree from MIT in 1994 and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1999.

Michelle Olsen is the new director of the School of Neuroscience in the College of Science at Virginia Tech. Dr. Olsen was recruited into the newly established School of Neuroscience in 2016 from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She focuses her research on the role of astrocytes in healthy brain development and aging and alterations in astrocyte function that contribute to neurodevelopmental disorders and neurodegenerative disease.

Dr. Olsen received her undergraduate degree in biochemistry from the University of Southern Oregon. She earned a Ph.D. in neurobiology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham