New Assignments for Five African American Scholars in Academia

J. Luke Wood, the Dean’s Distinguished Professor of Education at San Diego State University has been selected to serve as vice president for student affairs and campus diversity.

Dr. Wood holds a bachelor’s degree in Black history and politics and a master’s degree in higher education from California State University, Sacramento. He earned a second master’s degree in curriculum and instruction and a Ph.D. in educational leadership and policy from Arizona State University.

Riché J. Daniel Barnes was promoted to associate professor of gender studies and granted tenure at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. She is a sociocultural anthropologist whose teaching and research specializations are at the intersection of Black feminist theories, work, and family policy, and raced, gendered, and classed identity formation. Dr. Barnes is the author of Raising the Race: Black Career Women Redefine Marriage, Motherhood, and Community (Rutgers University Press, 2015).

Dr. Barnes is a graduate of Spelman College in Atlanta. She holds a master’s degree from Georgia State University and a second master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Emory University in Atlanta.

Destine Nock was appointed an assistant professor with a joint appointment in the department of engineering and public policy and the department of civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. She has been serving as a postdoctoral fellow and adjunct professor at the university.

Dr. Nock is a graduate of North Carolina A&T State University, where she double majored in electrical engineering and applied mathematics. As a Mitchell Scholar, she earned a master’s degree in leadership for sustainable development at Queens University of Belfast in Northern Ireland. Dr. Nook holds a Ph.D. in industrial engineering and operations research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

André L. Churchwell, a professor of medicine, biomedical engineering and radiology and radiological sciences, chief diversity officer for Vanderbilt University Medical Center and senior associate dean for diversity affairs in the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, has been named vice chancellor for equity, diversity and inclusion and chief diversity officer for Vanderbilt University. He has been serving in the post on an interim basis for the past year.

Dr. Churchwell is a magna cum laude graduate of the Vanderbilt University School of Engineering. He earned his medical degree at Harvard University.

Sampson Gholston has been promoted to full professor of engineering at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He joined the faculty at the university in 1997.

Dr. Gholston is a graduate of Austin Peay State University in Clarksdale, Tennessee, where he majored in engineering technology. He holds a master’s degree in industrial engineering from the University of Alabama and a Ph.D. in industrial and systems engineering from the University of Alabama at Huntsville.

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