Kara Yacoubou Djima was promoted to associate professor of mathematics and granted tenure at Wellesley College in Massachuettes. She is an applied mathematician who studies problems at the intersection of harmonic analysis and machine learning, including analysis on graphs, diffusion geometry, and image processing. Earlier in her career, Dr Djima served on the faculty at Amherst College in Massachusetts.
Dr. Djima, a native of Benin, holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the College of Staten Island of the City University of New York. She earned a master’s degree and Ph.D. both in applied mathematics and statistics and scientific computation from the University of Maryland.
Chanelle Wilson was promoted to associate professor of education and granted tenure at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. She joined Bryn Mawr’s faculty in 2017 as a visiting instructor and earned a tenure-track position in 2020. Dr. Wilson served as director of Africana Studies from 2020 to 2023.
Dr. Wilson is a graduate of Rowan University in New Jersey. She holds a master’s degree in urban education from Temple University in Philadelphia and a doctorate in educational leadership from the University of Delaware.
Ben Vinson III is a new fellow at the Afro-Latin American Research Institute in Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African & African American Research. Dr. Vinson served as president of Howard University in Washington, D.C., from September 2023 to August 2025. Earlier, he was provost and executive vice president at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. He has published several books throughout his career, including his most recent monograph, Frank O. Etheridge: Musician of the African Diaspora (Routledge, 2024).
Dr. Vinson holds a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, and a Ph.D. from Columbia University in New York City.
