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Derrick Brooms was appointed executive director of the Black Men’s Research Institute at Morehouse College in Atlanta, effective August 1. Dr. Brooms joins Morehouse from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, where he is a professor of Africana studies and sociology and the associate department head of Africana studies. His research primarily centers on Black men and boys’ pathways to and through college, their engagement on campus and identity development, as well as their lived experiences and representations in the media. He is the author of several books including Being Black, Being Male on Campus: Understanding and Confronting Black Male Collegiate Experiences (SUNY Press, 2017) and Stakes is High: Trials, Lessons, and Triumphs in Young Black Men’s Educational Journeys (SUNY Press, 2021).
Dr. Brooms is a graduate of the University of Chicago, where he majored in African and African American studies. He holds a Ph.D. in sociology from Loyola University Chicago.
Sherrilyn Ifill is the inaugural holder of Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., Esq. Endowed Chair in Civil Rights at the Howard University School of Law in Washington, D.C. Professor Ifill most recently served as the seventh president & director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund. Earlier, she was a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law in Baltimore for 20 years.
Professor Ifill is a graduate of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. She earned a juris doctorate at New York University.
Aisha Ali-Gombe, an associate professor of computer science and engineering at Louisiana State University, was named the director of the university’s new Cybersecurity Clinic.
Dr. Ali-Gombe is a graduate of the University of Abuja in Nigeria, where she majored in computer science. She holds an MBA from Bayero University in Kano, Nigeria, and a master’s degree in computer science and a Ph.D. in engineering and applied science from the University of New Orleans.
Vanderbilt University in Nashville held a ceremony honoring the 41 faculty members who have recently been appointed to endowed chairs. Several of these appointments went to Black scholars, including three who teach chemistry.
Rena Robinson, a professor of chemistry, is the inaugural Dorothy J. Wingfield Phillips Chair. The chair is named for Dorothy Phillips, the first black woman to complete a bachelor’s degree at Vanderbilt. Dr. Robinson’s research focuses on using technology to understand the molecular basis of health disparities in Alzheimer’s disease and sepsis. A graduate of the University of Louisville, Dr. Robinson earned a Ph.D. at Indiana University.
Steven Townsend, a professor of chemistry, holds the Stevenson Chair. His lab focuses on small molecule research involving the synthesis of natural products which may prove clinically useful in the treatment of human diseases ranging from cancer to neurodegenerative disorders. He earned his Ph.D. at Vanderbilt University.
Sean Seymore holds the Centennial Professorship in Law and is a professor of law and a professor of chemistry at Vanderbilt. He taught at Notre Dame Law School in 2021-22 as the John P. Murphy Foundation Professor of Law. Professor Seymore had previously served on Vanderbilt Law faculty from 2010 to 2021. Before joining Vanderbilt, Seymore taught at Washington & Lee University School of Law in Lexington, Virginia. Professor Seymore earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry at the University of Tennessee. He holds a master’s degree in chemistry from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and a Ph.D. in chemistry as well as a juris doctorate from the University of Notre Dame.
Lisa Lynette Thompson now holds the Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair of Black Homiletics and Liturgics. She was an assistant professor of Homiletics at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. She is the author of Ingenuity: Preaching as the Outsider (Abingdon, 2018). Dr. Thompson earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She holds a master of divinity degree from the Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, and a master’s degree in religion and a Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University.
Emily Townes holds the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Chair. She was most recently the dean of the Divinity School at the university. Before coming to Vanderbilt in 2013, Dr. Townes was the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of African American Religion and Theology at Yale Divinity School. She is the author of Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). Dr. Townes holds a bachelor’s degree, a master degree in divinity, and a doctorate of divinity from the University of Chicago. She holds a second doctorate from the joint Northwestern University/Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary program.
Barnard A. Jones was promoted to associate professor in the division of criminal justice and homeland security of the Lesley H. and Williams L. Collins College of Professional Studies at St. John’s University in Staten Island, New York. He was also granted tenure.
Dr. Jones earned a master’s degree in emergency management from the New Jersey Institute of Technology and a second master’s degree in management information systems from Kean University in Union, New Jersey. He holds a doctorate in civil security leadership, management, and policy from New Jersey City University.
Artha Gillis, a psychiatrist who studies the long-term effects of early-life adversity on children, will be the inaugural holder of the RNPH Board Advisors Term Chair in Psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Gillis has been a member of the UCLA faculty since 2021, after serving as a staff psychiatrist at UCLA Health. She specializes in evaluating and treating children who have experienced sexual trauma.
Dr. Gillis holds a Ph.D. from Texas A&M University and a medical doctorate from the University of California, Davis.
Terry-Ann Jones, professor of political science and director of the Africana studies program at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, has been appointed the deputy provost for undergraduate education at the university. She was on the faculty at Fairfield University in Connecticut for 15 years before joining the faculty at Lehigh in 2020.
Dr. Jones holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and Latin American and Caribbean studies from York University in Toronto. She earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in international studies from the University of Miami.
David Staten, a professor of rehabilitation counseling, has been named associate provost for academic affairs at South Carolina State University. He has served in the role on an interim basis since December 2021. He has been on the faculty for 22 years. Dr. Staten was the first African American man to serve as the president of the American Rehabilitation Counseling Association.
Dr. Staten received a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and a master’s degree in rehabilitation both from South Carolina State University. He received a Ph.D. in rehabilitation counselor education from the University of Iowa.
Bree Alexander was appointed clinical assistant professor and interim coordinator for the bachelor of social work degree program at the University of South Carolina. Earlier, she was a school-based therapist at the South Carolina Department of Mental Health.
Dr. Alexander completed her bachelor’s degree in psychology at Furman University in South Carolina. She earned a master of social work degree at the University of South Carolina and a Ph.D. in social work at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. She is the youngest person to ever earn a Ph.D. in social work at Baylor.
Cajetan Iheka is the new director of the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale University. He is currently a fellow of the Whitney Humanities Center and a professor of English at Yale. Dr. Iheka joined the faculty at Yale in 2019 after teaching at the University of Alabama. He is the author of two books that bridge African studies, literary and media studies, and the environmental humanities: Naturalizing Africa: Ecological Violence, Agency, and Postcolonial Resistance in African Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and African Ecomedia: Network Forms, Planetary Politics (Duke University Press, 2021).
Dr. Iheka is a graduate of Imo State University in Nigeria, where he majored in English education. He holds a master’s degree in English language and literature from Central Michigan University and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Michigan.
Earl J. Edwards is a new assistant professor in the educational leadership and higher education development program in the Lynch School of Education and Human Development at Boston College. He had taught in the public schools in Providence, Rhode Island, and Los Angeles. Dr. Edwards is a co-author of All Students Must Thrive: Transforming Schools to Combat Toxic Stressors and Cultivate Critical Wellness (National Center for Leadership in Education, 2019).
Dr. Edwards is a graduate of Boston College, where he majored in sociology. He holds a master’s degree in school leadership from Teachers College at Columbia University and a Ph.D. in urban schooling from the University of California, Los Angeles
Derrick Harriell, an associate professor of African American studies and English at the University of Mississippi, is the new director of the university’s African American studies program. Dr. Harriell served as director of the master of fine arts in creative writing program at the university from 2014 to 2022.
A native of Milwaukee, Dr. Harriell holds a master’s of fine arts degree in creative writing from Chicago State University. He earned a Ph.D. in English from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Crista Johnson-Agbakwu, a professor of obstetrics & gynecology and population & quantitative health sciences at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, has been appointed the inaugural executive director of the medical school’s Collaborative in Health Equity. She was the founding director of the Refugee Women’s Health Clinic and director of the Office of Refugee Health in the Southwest Interdisciplinary Research Center at Arizona State University.
Dr. Johnson-Agbakwu is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where she majored in biology. She earned her medical degree at Cornell University.
Duane Watson, the Frank W. Mayborn Professor and professor of psychology and human development at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, has been named associate provost for faculty development for the university. He has been serving as associate dean of equity, diversity, and inclusion for Vanderbilt Peabody College of education and human development.
Professor Watson, who joined the faculty at Vanderbilt in 2016 after teaching at the University of Illinois, is a graduate of Princeton University in New Jersey, where he majored in psychology. He earned a Ph.D. in brain and cognitive sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Phylicia Rashad, dean of the College of Fine Arts at Howard University in Washington, D.C., has been named the inaugural holder of the Toni Morrison Endowed Chair in Arts and Humanities at the university. The chair was funded by a $3 million endowment that was part of a $40 million gift to the university in 2020 from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott.
An accomplished actor and stage director, Rashad is perhaps best known for her role as Claire Huxtable on the long-running television hit “The Cosby Show.” Dean Rashad is a graduate of Howard University and holds honorary doctorates from more than a dozen colleges and universities.
Misty De Berry was hired as an assistant professor of performance studies in the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University beginning in the 2023-24 academic year. Dr. De Berry is currently a senior lecturer in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Dartmouth College.
Dr. De Berry is a graduate of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. She holds a master of fine arts degree from Columbia College in Chicago and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
Michelle Robinson, an associate professor in the School of Dentistry, was given the added duties of senior vice provost for faculty affairs at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Dr. Robinson has previously served as associate dean for Health Information and Business Systems and interim dean of the School of Dentistry.
Dr. Robinson is a graduate of Adelphi University in Garden City, New York. She earned a doctorate in dental medicine at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey.
Charles D. Brown II is a new assistant professor of physics at Yale University. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked on experiments with ultracold atomic gasses trapped in optical lattices.
Dr. Brown is a graduate of the University of Minnesota, where he majored in physics. He holds a Ph.D. in physics from Yale University.
Patricia Smith was appointed professor in the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, effective September 1. She is currently a visiting professor in creative writing at Princeton and a distinguished professor at the City University of New York, where she has taught since 2009. She is the author of eight books of poetry, including Incendiary Art (TriQuarterly, 2017), which won the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Award for Poetry.
Professor Smith earned a master of fine arts degree in creative writing at the University of Southern Maine.
Angela Byars-Winston, a professor of general internal medicine in the School of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Wisconsin, has been given the added duties as chair of the newly established Institute for Diversity Science at the university. She also serves as associate director in the Collaborative Center for Health Equity and as faculty lead in the Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research.
Dr. Byars-Winston holds a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in counselor education from San Diego State University and a Ph.D. in counseling psychology from Arizona State University.
Soyica Colbert, former interim dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and the Idol Family Professor of Performing Arts and African American Studies, was given the added duties of vice president for interdisciplinary initiatives at the university. She joined the faculty in 2013 and has served as chair of the department of performing arts and director of the Theater and Performance Studies Program. She is the author of Radical Vision: A Biography of Lorraine Hansberry (Yale University Press, 2021),
Dr. Colbert is a graduate of Georgetown University, where she majored in English. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Arisa White was promoted to associate professor of English and creative writing at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. She was also granted tenure. She joined the faculty in 2018. White is the author of Who’s Your Daddy? (Augery Books, 2021).
White is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, where she majored in creative writing and literature. She holds a master of fine arts degree in English poetry from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Samuel Johnson, a clinical associate professor at the Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit, was appointed chair of the department of radiology at the medical school. Dr. Johnson joined the WSU School of Medicine faculty as an assistant professor and section chief of ultrasound in 1990. He served as course director of radiologic anatomy for first-year medical students from 2003 to 2017.
Dr. Johnson earned a bachelor’s degree in biomedical sciences and a medical doctorate at the University of Michigan.
Sherard Robbins is a new lecturer in the department of leadership, policy, and organizations at Vanderbilt Peabody College of education and human development. He is a former assistant research professor in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Arizona.
Dr. Robbins is a graduate of Wheelock College, which is now part of Boston University. He holds a master’s degree in higher education administration from Salem State University in Massachusetts. Dr. Robbins earned a master’s degree in constitutional law and a Ph.D. in educational leadership and policy studies from the University of Arizona.
Historically Black Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina has announced that seven faculty members have been promoted to full professor. Three of these scholars are Black.
Ike Okonta is a professor of philosophy in the department of history, politics & social justice. He joined the faculty at the university in 1987. Dr. Okonta holds a master’s degree in political philosophy from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He earned a Ph.D. in political philosophy from the University of Georgia.
Tennille Presley was promoted to professor of chemistry. Her research focuses on providing a better understanding of contributing factors to vascular dysfunction and blood disorders as they relate to overall functional health in diabetic individuals in the African American population. Dr. Pressley is a graduate of North Carolina A&T State University. She earned a Ph.D. in biophysics from Ohio State University.
Pamela G. Jones was promoted to professor of biological sciences. Professor Jones is a graduate of Xavier University. She earned a Ph.D. at the University of Michigan.
Stacy Gee Hollins was appointed interim associate provost of academic affairs at Harris-Stowe State University in St. Louis. Dr. Hollins will continue to serve as dean of the Anheuser-Busch School of Business at the university, a post she has held since 2020. Earlier, she was an associate professor of management information systems at Maryville University in St. Louis.
Dr. Hollins is a graduate of Saint Louis University, where she majored in organizational studies and communications. She holds an MBA from Fontbonne University in St. Louis and a Ph.D. in education from the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
Getiria Onsongo was promoted and granted tenure in the department of mathematics, statistics, and computer science at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is an expert in the field of bioinformatics with a primary focus on clinical genomics and agricultural informatics. Prior to joining the faculty, Dr. Onsongo was an analyst at the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute.
A native of Kenya, Dr. Onsongo is a graduate of Macalester College. He holds a master’s degree and a doctorate in computer science from the University of Minnesota.
Candis Watts Smith, an associate professor of political science at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, has been given additional duties as interim vice provost for undergraduate education. She joined the faculty in 2021 after teaching at Pennsylvania State University. Her research examines the influence of race and ethnicity in shaping citizens’ identities, political attitudes, and policy preferences. Dr. Smith is the author or editor of several books including Black Mosaic: The Politics of Black Pan-Ethnic Diversity (New York University Press, 2014).
Dr. Smith earned bachelor’s, master’s, and Ph.D. degrees at Duke University.
Terrell Brown was appointed director of the master of social work degree program at Jackson State University in Mississippi. Dr. Brown is a tenured associate professor in the College of Health Sciences. He previously served as a tenured faculty member in the department of social work at Florida A&M University. Dr. Brown also taught at Barry University’s Ellen Whiteside McDonnell School of Social Work in Miami Shores, Florida.
Dr. Brown completed his bachelor’s degree in psychology at Florida Memorial University. He earned a master’s degree in higher, adult, and lifelong education and a master of social work degree from Michigan State University. Dr. Brown received his Ph.D. in social work/social gerontology from Howard University in Washington, D.C.
Marlon M. Bailey, a professor of African and African American studies and of women, gender, and sexuality studies at Washington University in St. Louis, was granted tenure. Before coming to Washington University, Dr. Bailey taught at Arizona State University and Indiana University. He is the author of Butch Queens Up in Pumps: Gender, Performance, and Ballroom Culture in Detroit (University of Michigan Press, 2013).
Professor Bailey is a graduate of Olivet College in Michigan, where he majored in theatre and speech education. He holds a master of fine arts degree in theatre performance from West Virginia University and a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in African American studies from the University of California, Berkeley.
Salome Brooks has been appointed clinical professor, chair, and program director of the department of physical therapy at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York. She was the founding program director and professor of the doctor of physical therapy program at Gordon College in Massachusetts. Earlier, Dr. Brooks served as associate professor and assistant professor of physical therapy at Springfield College in Massachusetts.
Dr. Brooks is a graduate of Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut, where she majored in physical therapy. She holds an MBA from Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, a master’s degree in motor control and education from Columbia University, and a doctorate in educational leadership and policy studies from Southern Connecticut State University.
Arnetta Villela-Smith was named co-chair of the ethnic studies department at Skyline Community College in San Bruno, California. For the past six years, she had been teaching ethnic studies with an emphasis on Africana studies, queer and gender studies, and media studies at Fullerton College in Orange County, California.
Villela-Smith earned a bachelor’s degree in Africana studies and a master’s degree in ethnic studies at San Francisco State University.
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