News

Graduate Highlight: Esther Ajayi-Lowo (MA '18, PhD '21)

Esther Ajayi-Lowo is receiving her Ph.D. in Multicultural Women’s and Gender Studies this December. Her achievements have been hard-fought and hard-won. As a full-time student and mother of three, she often juggled scholarly work with graduate teaching assistantships while also engaging in leadership and community service projects. 

Psychology professor receives 2021 state advocacy award

Ronald Palomares-Fernandez, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology at Texas Woman’s University, has received the Texas Psychological Association (TPA) 2021 State Advocacy Award for his commitment to the advancement of the psychology profession and discipline at the state regulatory level.

Couple creates scholarship to honor legacy of longtime chemistry professor

Jay-lin Jane-Topel, MS ’78, and her husband, David Topel, have established a new endowed scholarship to honor the life of a beloved Texas Woman's chemistry professor.

The Dr. James Johnson Scholarship Endowment in Chemistry has been created to honor the memory of the longtime educator. Johnson attended the University of Minnesota for his undergraduate and graduate degrees in chemistry and received his doctoral degree in organic chemistry from the University of Missouri. He taught for more than 40 years in higher education, retiring as professor of organic chemistry at Texas Woman's in May 2019. He passed away July 5, 2019.

Dr. Jonathan Olsen discusses Angela Merkel's impact on a united Germany with AICGS

"As Germany’s first Chancellor from the former GDR, how has she bridged the gaps between east and west and furthered unification in a country that was divided for forty years?" the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS) at Johns Hopkins University asked in a recent retrospective of Merkel's tenure and legacy as Chancellor.

"Angela Merkel’s contribution to German unity is ambiguous," Dr. Jonathan Olsen, professor and chair of the TWU Department of Social Sciences and Historical Studies, said. "On the one hand, as the first (and so far only) chancellor from the east, her symbolic stature is unquestionable, as is her role in advocating policies that have closed some of the economic, political, and social gaps between the east and west. On the other hand, considerable differences—from wages and wealth to social and political attitudes—have stubbornly persisted between the two halves of Germany. 

Ratonia Runnels featured in Scientific American's 'Social Capital in Black Communities is Often Overlooked'

“'As a young student, I learned early on that social work was a secular field and that people who have a strong faith background almost have to be prepared to tuck it in their pocket,' says Ratonia Runnels, an assistant professor of social work at Texas Woman’s University, who nonetheless studies how religion might be integrated into social work.

In 2011 Runnels published a study looking at how Black survivors of Hurricane Katrina used spirituality and religion to cope."