Four Black Faculty Members Who Are Taking on New Assignments

Marc Lamont Hill was appointed Presidential Professor of Urban Education at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He held an endowed chair in Temple University’s College of Media and Communication. Dr. Hill is the author of several books including Nobody: America’s War on the Vulnerable from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond (Atria, 2016) and Schooling Against the Prison: Abolitionist Education in the Age of Incarceration, forthcoming from Harvard Education Press.

Dr. Hill is a graduate of Temple University in Philadelphia. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Chinenye Anyanwu has been named faculty director of the new Black Sisters Optimizing Unity & Leadership (BSOUL House) Learning Community at the University of Connecticut. The BSOUL House is designed to support the scholastic efforts of female students who identify as African American/Black. She is an assistant clinical professor of pharmacy practice at the university. Her research centers on improving the provision of pharmaceutical care for racial/ethnic minorities through community-based interventions, policy change, and advocacy.

Dr. Anyanwu holds a bachelor’s degree and a doctor of pharmacy degree from the University of Connecticut. She also earned a master of public health degree from George Washington University.

James Kereri was appointed assistant professor of engineering at the University of Missouri. He was an assistant professor at the University of Central Missouri.

Dr. Kereri is a graduate of Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology in Kenya. He holds an MBA from the University of Central Missouri, a master’s degree in construction management from Bowling Green State University in Ohio, and a Ph.D. in construction management from Louisiana State University.

Curtis Austin, an associate professor of history in the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies at Arizona State University, has been appointed as the new associate director of the Institute for Humanities Research at the university. From 2017 to 2020, Dr. Austin served as associate professor of history and founding director of the Black studies program at the University of Oregon. He is the author of Up Against the Wall: Violence in the Making and Unmaking of the Black Panther Party (University of Arkansas Press, 2008).

Dr. Austin holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in U.S. history from the University of Southern Mississippi. He earned a Ph.D. in history at Mississippi State University.