Appointments, Promotions & Resignations

• Billy R. Ballard was named interim dean of the School of Medicine at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee. Dr. Ballard is chair of the department of pathology and has been serving as associate dean for graduate medical education.

• Leandra Hayes-Thomas was appointed assistant vice president for major and planned gifts at Claflin University in Orangeburg, South Carolina. She was assistant vice president of institutional advancement and director of development at Talladega College in Alabama.

• Leonard Jack Jr., director of the Center for Minority Health, Health Disparities, Research and Education at Xavier University in New Orleans, was named editor in chief of Health Promotion Practice, a journal of the Society for Public Health Education.

Dr. Jack is a graduate of Virginia State University. He holds master’s and doctoral degrees from Penn State.

• Karen M. Clark, assistant professor and chair of the department of communications at Langston University in Langston, Oklahoma, has announced her retirement from teaching. She has served in that capacity since 1992. Clark will continue writing her syndicated newspaper column.

• M. Christopher Brown II was appointed executive vice president and provost at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. He was dean of the College of Education at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.

Dr. Brown is a graduate of South Carolina State University. He holds a master’s degree from the University of Kentucky and a doctorate from Pennsylvania State University.

• Crystal Nix Hines, an independent television writer and producer and an attorney in Los Angeles, was named to the board of trustees of Princeton University. She is a 1985 graduate of Princeton and was a classmate of Barack Obama at Harvard Law School.