A Quartet of Black Scholars Who Are Taking on New Duties

Nwando Achebe, the Jack and Margaret Sweet Endowed Professor of History at Michigan State University, has been assigned the additional duties of associate dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion for the College of Social Science. She is the author of Farmers, Traders, Warriors, and Kings: Female Power and Authority in Northern Igboland, 1900-1960 (Heinemann, 2005) and  The Female King of Colonial Nigeria: Ahebi Ugbabe (Indiana University Press, 2011). She is founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of West African History.

A native of Nigeria, Dr. Achebe joined the faculty at Michigan State University in 2005 after teaching at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. She earned a Ph.D. at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Anthony Burrow, associate professor of human development and associate dean for extension and outreach in the College of Human Ecology at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, has been named director of the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research. Established in 2011, the Bronfenbrenner Center brings together researchers with health and human service organizations to expand and strengthen the connections between research, policy, and practice. Dr. Burrow joined the faculty at Cornell in 2011.

Dr. Burrow is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in developmental psychology from Florida International University.

Jessica M. Pena, an assistant professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, was given the added duties as assistant director of admissions. She specializes in cardiovascular prevention and lipidology.

Dr. Pena is a graduate of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. She holds a master of public health degree from Harvard University and earned her medical degree at Weill Cornell Medical College.

Adia Harvey Wingfield, a leading sociology expert in gender equity and racial inequality, has been installed as the Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.  She joined the faculty at the university in 2015. In addition to her role as professor of sociology, Dr. Wingfield serves as the associate dean for faculty development in Arts & Sciences. She is the author of Flatlining: Race, Work and Health Care in the New Economy (University of California Press, 2019).

Dr. Wingfield is a graduate of Spelman College in Atlanta, where she majored in English. She holds a master’s degree and sociology and a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University.

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