Shirley Franklin, the former mayor of Atlanta, was named the Barbara Jordan Visiting Professor in Ethics and Political Values at the Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. Franklin served as mayor of Atlanta from 2002 to 2010.
Franklin is a graduate of Howard University in Washington, D.C., and holds a master’s degree in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania.
Vivian Fluellen was named interim chair of the department of family and consumer science at Fort Valley State University in Georgia. Fluellen has been a member of the staff at the university for more than 20 years.
Fluellen is a graduate of Fort Valley State University and holds a master’s degree from Iowa State University. She is currently completing work on a doctorate in family and consumer science education at Iowa State.
Desmond U. Patton is a new assistant professor of social work at the University of Michigan. He was a researcher in the Child Health Data Lab at the Children’s Hospital of Chicago Research Center and the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University.
Dr. Patton is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he majored in political science. He holds a master of social work degree from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. in social service administration from the University of Chicago.
