Mills Matters

Administrative adjustments abound

In this year of change and adjustment, a number of personnel changes are taking place in various departments across the Mills campus. • Former Dean of Students and Vice President of Student Life

Chicora Martin has been appointed to the same position at

Agnes Scott College, a women’s college in Decatur, Georgia.

Taking their place is the team of Lilian Gonzalez ’09, associate dean of students and a licensed therapist, and Allie Littlefox,

MBA ’20, EdD ’22, assistant vice president of student life, innovation, and planning, who started at Mills in the athletic department in 2013. The two are overseeing an expanded menu of offerings and activities for the student body. • Former Dean of the School of Education Wendi Williams has taken the position of senior vice president and provost at

Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara, which offers master’s degrees and doctorates in psychology and leadership studies. SOE department heads are leading the school this academic year. • Interim Provost & Vice President of Academic Affairs Patricia L.

Hardaway completed her one-year term in the position and has since been appointed to the role of acting associate vice chancellor for staff human resources and chief human resource officer at UC Santa Cruz. In becoming the 10th college at Northeastern

University, Mills has moved away from the provost model and will instead be led by a dean, and taking the position of interim dean this year is Beth Kochly, professor of chemistry and former associate provost for curriculum and academic resources.

She has been teaching chemistry at Mills since 2008. Joining Kochly in navigating the formation of academic programs for Mills at Northeastern is a new Dean’s Advisory Group, which includes the following professors specializing in the listed areas: • Adjunct Professor of Public Policy Ashley Adams,

Student Academic Concerns & Conflict Resolution • Associate Professor of Art History Meryl Bailey,

Faculty Development • Associate Professor of Business Kate Karniouchina,

Lokey School • Professor of Practice Darcelle Lahr,

DEI Initiatives

• Professor of Ethnic Studies and English Ajuan Mance,

Digital Learning, Teaching & Learning • Professor of Literature and Languages and

Graduate School Dean Juliana Spahr,

Faculty Advancement, Tenure & Promotion • Associate Professor of Business Carol Theokary,

Curriculum Development

• Associate Professor of Biology Helen Walter,

Academic Experience Curricular Initiatives

• Professor of Practice Carolyn Sherwood-Call,

Student Academic Progress Professor of Psychology Christie Chung will continue to serve as associate dean of research, scholarship, and partnerships, and she is the special advisor on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Mills alums join Northeastern board

Two Mills alums and former board members have been voted in as new additions to Northeastern’s Board of Trustees.

The positions for Irene Panagopoulos ’85 and Katie Sanborn ’83 were announced to the Northeastern community via news release on November 10, 2022.

Panagopoulos first served on the Mills board immediately after she graduated from the College, taking on the then-new role of recent graduate trustee. She rejoined the board in 2011, and her daughter Eleni graduated from Northeastern in 2015. “I had an amazing experience at Mills and my daughter had an amazing experience at Northeastern,” Panagopoulos said in the release. “Now our schools have come together.”

Based in Athens, Greece, she oversees the shipping company Magna Marine Inc., which was started by her late father in 1991.

Sanborn was chair of the recently dissolved Mills Board of Trustees, which she initially joined in 2013 and oversaw throughout the transition and merger. “I’m excited to be able to continue this work on the Northeastern board,” she said. “Mills and Northeastern are two very different institutions, but we are driven by the same objectives and goals.”

After Mills, she earned a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University. Sanborn is director of editorial services for the research firm OTR Global LLC, and she lives in San Mateo County.

Northeastern’s Board of Trustees is comprised of 35 alums and business leaders across the United States and around the world. The board held its first meeting of the 2022–23 academic year on the Mills campus in October 2022.

 Heather Stockton ’13, MFA ’18, performs “Viral Viragos,” a comedic interpretive dance of an infamous video of outrage over Bath & Body Works candles, in Lisser Hall on November 19, 2022. She was just one of a full slate of alum dancers and choreographers that participated in Return: Fall Dance Concert, a two-night event staged with the Mills Dance Department. The list of artists, some of whom presented their work in video form and some of whom performed live, included Brittany Mathis, MFA ’22; Kim Ip ’14; Jazmine Freeman, MFA ’21; and Arielle Cole, MFA ’21, who also works as the Dance Department’s administrative assistant. In addition, four Northeastern first-years presented a work choreographed by Stockton and Garth Grimball, MFA ’13, which came about as part of a pop-up class called Creation to Performance.

Mills bridge programs receive regional recognition

Students involved in bridge programs on the Mills campus have been recruited for a new project that will provide coursework in financial literacy as well as college scholarships to the institutions of their choice.

The Economic Equity and Financial Education Pilot Program aims to address the racial wealth gap by enrolling 25 Black high-school students from Oakland and the larger Bay Area region in a two-semester class at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. The rigorous course will address subjects like personal finance, creating wealth, and making investments. Everyone who completes the class will receive $7,000 scholarships for college.

The youth chosen for the program were identified through their participation in two Mills TRIO programs, which are federal projects that support students who face obstacles on the paths to higher education. The two are Upward Bound, which was established at Mills in 1965, and the Mills Educational Talent Search (METS), created in 1998. Together, they provide support for applications, financial aid, career advice, and more to aspirational first-generation college students.

The Economic Equity and Financial Education Pilot Program is a joint effort between The PG&E Corporation Foundation, UC Berkeley, and Mills College at Northeastern University. Jason Miles, a Black businessman who founded Amenti Capital Group, is also providing support.

Calendar

Mills College Art Museum

The museum is open 11:00 am–4:00 pm Tuesday through Sunday and until 7:30 pm Wednesday. Admission is free. Visit mcam.mills.edu for more information. 2023 Senior Thesis Exhibition ■ March 14–April 2 This yearly show provides graduating studio art majors with the opportunity to experience their first professional show.

Artist Lectures

All events are free.

February 1 ■ Sita Bhaumik Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik is an artist, writer, and educator who uses art as a strategy to connect memory and history with the urgent social issues of our time. Her work focuses on decolonization, the hierarchy of the senses, and the impact of migration. Raised in Los Angeles (Tongva land) and based in Oakland (Ohlone land), she is Indian and Japanese Colombian American. Bhaukmik is a founding member of the People’s Kitchen Collective in Oakland, along with Jocelyn Jackson and Saqib Keval. She holds a BA in studio art from Scripps College, an MFA in interdisciplinary art, and an MA in visual and critical studies from California College of the Arts. 7:00 pm, Danforth Lecture Hall at Jane B. Aron Art Center.

Mills Music Now Concert Series

Visit performingarts.mills.edu for more information on times and tickets.

February 4 ■ Laetitia Sonami, MFA ’81 March 18 ■ Jean Macduff Vaux Composer-in-Residence Raven

Chacon

March 31-April 1 ■ Signal Flow Festival April 16 ■ Music of Barbara Strozzi, Venetian Virtuosa

Tech Intersections: Womxn of Color in Computing

January 28

The annual event for marginalized groups working in tech returns, featuring talks on developing career skills, untangling systems within the tech industry, and more. Speakers include Erin Pangilinan, co-founder and chief creative technology officer of Salamat, and Bria Sullivan, chief technology officer and founder of Honey B Games. Attendance is limited to 250; visit techintersections.org to register. 9:00 am-5:00 pm, Littlefield Concert Hall and Lorry I. Lokey Graduate School of Business.

Commencement 2023

Yes, there will be an on-campus celebration for the Class of 2023! Save the date for Sunday, April 30; more details will be available in the months to come as well as in the spring Quarterly.

Grants available to Women Who Empower

Mills alumnae are invited to apply for Northeastern’s Women Who Empower (WWE) Innovation Award.

WWE is in its third year of recognizing and funding women in the Northeastern community with entrepreneurial spirits. Previous awardees include Emily Man and Valeria Martinuzzi, who cofounded Venova Technologies to develop a new contraceptive device; Binja Basimike, who launched Kivu Venture Capital in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to boost food-industry businesses in Africa; and Natasha Shazana, who started the bra company Soko to authentically serve customers in her home country of Malaysia.

In 2021, one-time awards were granted to 19 Northeastern students and alumnae (with 17 ventures), with an increase in 2022 to 22 individual honorees. A committee of seasoned women in business evaluate the entries, with prizes doled out in the amounts of $10,000 (first place), $5,000 (runners-up), or $2,500 (honorable mentions).

The deadline to enter is March 1, though applications will be capped at 100 in total, so organizers encourage interested parties to send in their submissions ASAP.

Visit tinyurl.com/wwe-innovation-award for more information and to apply.

Campus kudos

A selection of recent achievements by faculty, staff, and students

Professor of English Elmaz

Abinader wrote a pandemic-inspired piece for the online food publication The Counter, titled “My Lebanese grandmother smuggled a dab of yogurt culture out of her country during the 1918 pandemic. I’m making laban in tribute.”

Associate Adjunct Professor of Ethnic Studies Natalee Kēhaulani

Bauer’s new book, Tender Violence in US Schools: Benevolent Whiteness and the Dangers of Heroic White Womanhood, was released in November 2022. The Routledge release is part of the publisher’s Decolonizing Studies in Education series.

Professor Emerita of Dance

Molissa Fenley performed in Merce Cunningham’s “Loops for Three” as part of Unavailable Memory: In Conversation with Cunningham & Cage, a three-night series of performances held at New York’s Jerome Robbins Theater from October 27–29, 2022.

A story co-written by Adjunct

Professor of English Kim Magowan

and Michelle Ross, “Deluxe Scrabble,” was nominated for Cutleaf Journal’s Best of the Net awards. Magowan also had two other stories published: “Favor” in Cleaner Magazine; and “Noelle Strodemeyer Sucks” in Literary Mama.

Professor of Practice and Director of the Center for Transformative

Action Carrie Maultsby-Lute was a featured speaker at the San Francisco Human Rights Commission conference in November 2022, and she also made an appearance with the GreenBiz Group’s Verge event, which focused on the climate crisis, in San Jose on October 27.

RUBY WALLAU PAULA COURT

Professor of Ethnic Studies and English

Ajuan Mance has published a new book, Living While Black: Portraits of Everyday Resistance, which features her unique illustrations that delve into the everyday lives of Black Americans. She told News@ Northeastern that Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 inspired the project.

Director of Theater Studies Victor

Talmadge took the role of playwright Sholem Asch in the San Francisco Playhouse production of Paula Vogel’s Indecent, which ran from September 22– November 5, 2022. The Tony-nominated play covers the scandal surrounding the real-life Broadway debut of Asch’s The God of Vengeance.

The Yerba Buena/Moscone MUNI station on the newly opened Central Subway line in San Francisco includes an etching from the 1978–84 series “Moscone Center” by Professor of Art Catherine Wagner.