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On the Move March 2020: Recent Hirings and Promotions in Higher Education

  • 03/11/20

Dr. Laura Lindenfeld, professor of Journalism and executive director of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science, has been appointed dean of the School of Journalism at Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, NY. She has held the interim dean position since January 2019. Dr. Lindenfeld came to Stony Brook in 2016 as the executive director of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science.

Dr. Ashish Jha will be joining Brown University in Providence, RI, as the dean of the School of Public Health in September 2020. Dr. Jha is currently the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, and a professor at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health.

Alison Carr-Chellman, who is currently the dean of the College of Education, Health and Human Sciences at the University of Idaho, will begin her new position as dean for the School of Education and Health Sciences at the University of Dayton in Dayton, OH, on July 1.

Georgia Southern University has hired Mississippi State University’s Jared Benko as its new director of athletics. Benko will officially start on April 1.

Simmons University in Boston, MA, has appointed Dr. Ray Pfeiffer as the new director of the School of Business within the institution's College of Organizational, Computational and Information Sciences (COCIS). Prior to joining Simmons in August 2019 he served as professor, associate dean for Undergraduate Programs and chair of Accounting at the M.J. Neeley School of Business at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, TX.

Kirk Dombrowski has been named vice president for research for the University of Vermont in Burlington, VT. Dombrowski comes from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he was associate dean for research and partnerships in the College of Arts and Sciences and was also a professor of sociology.

The American College of Healthcare Sciences in Portland, OR, has announced the appointment of Natalie DeWitt, Ph.D., as the college’s new dean of Students. DeWitt brings 15 years of experience in higher education in both traditional learning environments and online classrooms.

Jacksonville University in Jacksonville, FL, has named Barbara A. Ritter as dean of the Davis College of Business. She comes to Jacksonville from Coastal Carolina University, where she was dean of the Wall College of Business and taught management and the science of decision-making for 16 years. Ritter will start her new post in July.

Chandler Short has been announced as the new director of athletics at McPherson College in McPherson, KS. Short, who is currently serving as interim director of athletics, will be the first woman to serve as the full-time athletic director in the history the college.

Terranze Griffin is the new director of alumni engagement at Rutgers University–Newark (RU-N)  in New Jersey. Griffin joins RU-N from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where he was associate director of East Coast alumni relations for more than two and a half years.

Georgia Military College’s (GMC) Columbus, GA, campus has named Major General, USA (Ret.) David C. Coburn as its new executive director. Coburn is joining the GMC team this month after retiring from the U.S. Army after a 37-year career.

Courtney Cawthon is the new Dining Services director at Hamline University in St. Paul, MN. Cawthon comes to Hamline with a degree in Dianetics from Western Illinois University in Macomb, IL, and several years of experience in dining services at Loras College in Dubuque, IA, first as a residential manager and then as a retail manager.

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