Lance Freeman has been appointed the University of Pennsylvania’s twenty-ninth Penn Integrates Knowledge University Professor. Dr. Freeman is the James W. Effron University Professor, with joint appointments in the department of city and regional planning in the Stuart Weitzman School of Design and the department of sociology in the School of Arts & Sciences at Penn. Earlier, he was a professor in the urban planning program at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University. His most recent book is A Haven and a Hell: The Ghetto in Black America (Columbia University Press, 2019).
Dr. Freeman is a graduate of the University at Buffalo of the State University of New York System. He holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in city and regional planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Aerial Ellis has been appointed to the Wells Fargo Endowed Chair in the department of mass communication at North Carolina Central Univerity. For the past decade, Dr. Ellis has taught courses in public relations, cross-cultural communication, organizational communication, and leadership at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee.
Professor Ellis holds a bachelor’s degree in speech communication from Tennessee State University and a master’s degree in mass communication from Middle Tennessee State University. She also earned a global executive doctoral degree from the University of Southern California.
Rutgers University-Newark has appointed Salamishah Tillet as executive director of Express Newark, a center for socially engaged art and design. She is the Henry Rutgers Professor of African American and African Studies and Creative Writing and the founding director of New Arts Justice, an initiative for Black feminist approaches to public art in the City of Newark. Professor Tillet is the author of In Search of The Color Purple: The Story of an American Masterpiece (Harry Abrams, 2022).
Dr. Tillet is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where she majored in English and Afro-American studies. She holds a master’s degree from Brown University and a second master’s degree n English and a Ph.D. in the history of American civilization from Harvard University.
Marcelle Haddix, Distinguished Dean’s Professor of Literacy, Race, and Justice in reading and language arts at Syracuse University in New York, has been given the added duties of associate provost for strategic initiatives at the university. She is the author of Cultivating Racial and Linguistic Diversity in Literacy Teacher Education: Teachers Like Me (Routledge, 2015).
Dr. Haddix is a graduate of Drake Univerity in Des Moines, Iowa, where she majored in secondary education and English. She holds a master’s degree in adult education from Cardinal Stritch University in Milwaukee, and a Ph.D. in education from Boston College.
Charlene Gilbert will join the Office of Academic Affairs at Ohio State University as senior vice provost of student academic excellence, effective April 4. She will also serve as a professor in the department of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. Since 2017 Dr. Gilbert has been dean of the College of Arts and Letters at the University of Toledo.
Dr. Gilbert received her bachelor’s degree from Yale University. She holds a master of fine arts degree from Temple University in Philadelphia and a Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska.
