Osamudia James has been named the Henry P. Brandis Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law. Before joining the University of North Carolina faculty in 2021, she spent over a decade teaching law at the University of Miami. Her academic expertise includes administrative law, civil rights and discrimination, education law, and race and the law.
Professor James earned her bachelor’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania. She holds a master of laws degree from the University of Wisconsin and a juris doctorate from Georgetown University.
Berkita Bradford has been named chair of the hospitality and tourism department in the School of Business at North Carolina Central University. She has two decades of experience in higher education, holding positions such as commissioner for the Accreditation Commission for Programs in Hospitality Administration and president of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities – Hospitality Management Consortium.
Dr. Bradford received her bachelor’s degree in hotel/restaurant management and a master’s degree in public administration with a concentration in human resource management from Grambling State University in Louisiana. She holds a Ph.D. in hospitality management from Kansas State University.
Monifa Vaughn-Cooke has joined the faculty at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University as an associate professor in the department of health systems and implementation science in the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine in Roanoke. She previously held a faculty appointment with the department of mechanical engineering at the University of Maryland.
Dr. Vaughn-Cooke received her bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering and her master’s degree in industrial and systems engineering from the University of Southern California. She earned a Ph.D. in industrial engineering from Pennsylvania State University.
Lauren Sudeall has been named to the David Daniels Allen Distinguished Chair of Law at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. She joined the university’s faculty last year and currently serves as director of the Vanderbilt Access to Justice Initiative. Previously, she served as professor of law at Georgia State University.
Professor Sudeall is a graduate of Yale University where she majored in political science. She holds a juris doctorate from Harvard University.
Cécile Fromont has joined the Harvard University faculty as a professor in the department of history of art and architecture. She most recently served as a professor of African and South Atlantic art at Yale University. Her academic research into the history of Africa and Latin America has led her to authoring two books, Images on a Mission in Early Modern Kongo and Angola (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2022) and The Art of Conversation: Christian Visual Culture in the Kingdom of Kongo (Omohundro Institute and University of North Carolina Press, 2014).
Dr. Fromont is a graduate of Sciences-Po Paris where she studied cultural policy and management and international relations. She holds a master’s degree and Ph.D. in history of art and architecture from Harvard University.
Robert Hawkins has been named vice dean of the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He currently serves as associate dean for academic and faculty affairs at the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at North Carolina State University. Previously, he served as associate dean for academic affairs for the New York University Silver School of Social Work.
Dr. Hawkins is a graduate of Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, where he majored in speech communications. He holds a master of public administration degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as well as a master’s degree and Ph.D. in social policy from Brandeis University in Massachusetts.
Nene Diop has been promoted to associate professor of French with tenure at Colorado College, where she has taught courses on French and Francophone language cultures since 2012. Her research focuses on women’s writings in Francophone West African literature, with an emphasis on Senegalese works.
Dr. Diop holds a master’s degree in linguistics from the Université Gaston Berger in St. Louis in Sénégal, as well as a master’s degree and Ph.D. in French from the University of Colorado.
Roshaunda Breeden has joined the faculty at North Carolina State University as an assistant professor of higher education, opportunity, equity, and justice in the College of Education. She has been serving as an assistant professor of educational leadership at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina.
Dr. Breeden is an alumna of North Carolina State University where she double-majored in psychology and Africana studies. She received her master’s degree and Ph.D. in college student affairs administration from the University of Georgia.
